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ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 



Administration 



Civil Service 



By / 

/ 

r 

Theodore Roosevelt 

Author of" The Winning of the West," " The Wilderness 
Hunter," "• Hunting Trips of a Ranchman," etc. 



American Ideals 
Part IT. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 
1900 



En3 



15-10 

Copyright, 1897 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



• • J • «> 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — Six Years of Civil Service 

Reform - - - - 5 
'II. — Administering the New 

York Police Force - 45 
III. — ^How Not to Help our Poorer 

Brother - - - - 89 
IV. — The Monroe Doctrine - 11 1 
V. — Washington's Forgotten 

'Maxim - - - - 140 
VI. — National Life and Charac- 
ter ----- 176 
VII. — Social Evolution - - 225 

VIII. — The Law of Civilization 

and Decay - - - 264 



SIX YEARS OF CIVIL SER- 
VICE REFORM ' 

NO question of internal administration is 
so important to the United States as 
the question of Civil Service reform, be- 
cause the spoils system, which can only be 
supplanted through the agencies which have 
found expression in the act creating the 
Civil Service Commission, has been for 
seventy years the most potent of all the 
forces tending to bring about the degrada- 
tion of our politics. No republic can per- 
manently endure when its politics are cor- 
rupt and base; and the spoils system, the 
application in political life of the degrading 
doctrine that to the victor belong the spoils, 
produces corruption and degradation. Th 
man who is in politics for the offices mig 
^ Scribner's Magazine, August, 1895 
5 



idit ^V. 



6 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

just as well be in politics for the money he 
can get for his vote, so far as the general 
good is concerned. When the then Vice- 
President of the United States, Mr. Hen- 
dricks, said that he '' wished to take the boys 
in out of the cold to warm their toes," 
thereb}^ meaning that he wished to distribute 
offices among the more active heelers, to the 
rapturous enthusiasm of the latter, he ut- 
tered a sentiment which was morally on the 
same plane with a wish to give " the boys *' 
five dollars apiece all around for their votes, 
and fifty dollars apiece when they showed 
themselves sufficiently active in bullying, 
bribing and cajoling other voters. Such a 
sentiment should bar any man from public 
life, and will bar him whenever the people 
grow to realize that the worst enemies of 
the Republic are the demagogue and the 
corruptionist. The spoils-monger and spoils- 
seeker invariably breed the bribe-taker and 
bribe-giver, the embezzler of public funds 
and the corrupter of voters. Civil Service 
reform is not merely a movement to better 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 7 

the public service. It achieves this end too ; 
but its main purpose is to raise the tone of 
pubhc Hfe, and it is in this direction that its 
effects have been of incalculable good to the 
whole community. 

For six years, from May, 1889, to May, 
1895, I was a member of the National Civil 
Service Commission, and it seems to me to 
be of interest to show exactly what has been 
done to advance the law and what to hin- 
der its advancement during these six years, 
and who have been the more prominent 
among its friends and foes. I wish to tell 
" the adventures of Philip on his way 
through the world," and show who robbed 
him, who helped him, and who passed him 
by. It would take too long to give the 
names of all our friends, and it is not worth 
while to more than allude to most of our 
foes and to most of those who were indif- 
ferent to us ; but a few of the names should 
be preserved and some record made of the 
fights that have been fought and won and 
of the way in which, by fits and starts, and 



8 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

with more than one set-back, the general ad- 
vance has been made. 

Of the Commission itself little need be 
said. When I took office the only Commis- 
sioner was Mr. Charles Lyman, of Connect- 
icut, who resigned when I did. Honorable 
Hugh S. Thompson, ex-Governor of South 
Carolina, was made Commissioner at the 
same time that I was, and after serving for 
three years resigned. He was succeeded by 
Mr. George D. Johnston, of Louisiana, who 
was removed by the President in November, 
1893, being replaced by Mr. John R. Proc- 
ter, the former State Geologist of Kentucky, 
who is still serving. The Commission has 
never varied a hand's breadth from its 
course throughout this time; and Messrs. 
Thompson, Procter, Lyman, and myself 
were always a unit in all important ques- 
tions of policy and principle. Our aim was 
always to procure the extension of the classi- 
fied service as rapidly as possible, and to see 
that the law was administered thoroughly 
and fairly. The Commission does not have 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 9 

the power that it should, and in many in- 
stances there have been violations or eva- 
sions of the law in particular bureaus or de- 
partments which the Commission was not 
able to prevent. In every case, however, we 
made a resolute fight, and gave the widest 
publicity to the wrong-doing. Often, even 
where we have been unable to win the actual 
fight in which we were engaged, the fact of 
our having made it, and the further fact 
that we were ready to repeat it on provoca- 
tion, has put a complete stop to the repe- 
tition of the offence. As a consequence, 
while there have been plenty of violations 
and evasions of the law, yet their propor- 
tion was really very small, taking into ac- 
count the extent of the service. In the ag- 
gregate it is doubtful if one per cent, of all 
the employees have been dismissed for po- 
litical reasons. In other words, where under 
the spoils system a hundred men would have 
been turned out, under the Civil Service 
Law, as administered under our supervi- 
sion, ninety-nine men were kept in. 



lo CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

In the administration of the law very 
much depends upon the Commission. Good 
heads of departments and bureaus will ad- 
minister it well anyhow; but not only the 
bad men, but also the large class of men 
who are weak rather than bad, are sure to 
administer the law poorly unless kept well 
up to the mark. The public should ex- 
ercise a most careful scrutiny over the ap- 
pointment and over the acts of Civil Service 
Commissioners, for there is no office the 
effectiveness of which depends so much 
upon the way in which the man himself 
chooses to construe his duties. A Commis- 
sioner can keep within the letter of the law 
and do his routine work and yet accomplish 
absolutely nothing in the way of securing 
the observance of the law. The Commis- 
sion, to do useful work, must be fearless and 
vigilant. It must actively interfere when- 
ever wrong is done, and must take all the 
steps that can be taken to secure the pun- 
ishment of the wrong-doer and to protect 
the employee threatened with molestation. 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM n 

This course was consistently followed by 
the Commission throughout my connection 
with it. I was myself a Republican from 
the North. Messrs. Thompson and Procter 
were from the South, and were both Demo- 
crats who had served in the Confederate 
armies ; and it would be impossible for any- 
one to desire as associates two public men 
with higher ideals of duty, or more resolute 
in their adherence to those ideals. It is un- 
necessary to say that in all our dealings 
there was no single instance wherein the 
politics of any person or the political sig- 
nificance of any action was so much as taken 
into account in any case that arose. The 
force of the Commission itself was all chosen 
through the competitive examinations, and 
included men of every party and from every 
section of the country ; and I do not believe 
that in any public or private office of the 
size it would be possible to find a more hon- 
est, efficient, and coherent body of workers. 

From the beginning of the present sys- 
tem each President of the United States has 



12 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

been its friend, but no President has been 
a radical Civil Service reformer. Presi- 
dents Arthur, Harrison, and Cleveland have 
all desired to see the service extended, and 
to see the law well administered. No one 
of them has felt willing or able to do all 
tliat the reformers asked, or to pay much 
heed to their wishes save as regards that 
portion of the service to which tlie law ac- 
tually applied. Each has been a sincere party 
man, who has felt strongly on such ques- 
tions as those of the tariff, of finance, and of 
our foreign policy, and each has been 
obliged to conform more or less closely to 
the wishes of his party associates and fel- 
low party leaders; and, of course, these 
party leaders, and the party politicians gen- 
erally, wished the offices to be distributed as 
they had been ever since Andrew Jackson 
became President. In consequence the of- 
fices outside the protection of the law have 
still been treated, under every administra- 
tion, as patronage, to be disposed of in the 
interest of the dominant party. An occa- 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 13 

sional exception was made here and there. 
The postmaster at New York, a Republican, 
was retained by President Cleveland in his 
first administration, and the postmaster of 
Charleston, a Democrat, was retained by 
President Harrison ; but, with altogether in- 
significant exceptions, the great bulk of the 
non-classified places have been changed for 
political reasons by each administration, the 
ofiice-holders politically opposed to the ad- 
ministration being supplanted or succeeded 
by political adherents of the administration. 
Where the change has been complete it 
does not matter much whether it was made 
rapidly or slowly. Thus, the fourth-class 
postmasterships were looted more rapidly 
under the administration of President Har- 
rison than under that of President Cleve- 
land, and the consular service more rapidly 
under President Cleveland than under Pres- 
ident Harrison; but the final result was 
the same in both cases. Indeed, I think that 
the brutality which accompanied the greater 
speed w^as in some ways of service to the 



14 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

country, for it directed attention to the in- 
iquity and folly of the system, and empha- 
sized, in the minds of decent citizens, the 
fact that appointments and removals for 
political reasons in places where the duties 
are wholly non-political cannot be defended 
by any man who looks at public affairs from 
the proper standpoint. 

The advance has been made purely on two 
lines, that is, by better enforcement of the 
law, and by inclusion under the law, or un- 
der some system similar in its operations, of 
a portion of the service previously adminis- 
tered in accordance with the spoils theory. 
Under President Arthur the first classifica- 
tion was made, which included 14,000 
places. Under President Cleveland, during 
his first term, the limits of the classified 
service were extended by the inclusion of 
7000 additional places. During President 
Harrison's term the limit was extended by 
the inclusion of about eight thousand 
places ; and hitherto during President Cleve- 
land's second term, by the inclusion of some 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM i5 

six thousand places; in addition to which 
the natural growth of the service has been 
such that the total number of offices now 
classified is over forty thousand. More- 
over, the Secretary of the Navy under Pres- 
ident Harrison, introduced into the navy 
yards a system of registration of laborers, 
which secures the end desired by the Com- 
mission; and Secretary Herbert has con- 
tinued this system. It only rests, however, 
upon the will of the Secretary of the Navy ; 
and as we cannot expect always to have sec- 
retaries as clear-sighted as Messrs. Tracy 
and Herbert, it is most desirable that this 
branch of the service should be put directly 
under the control of the Commission. 

The Cabinet officers, though often not 
Civil Service reformers to start with, usu- 
ally become such before their terms of office 
expire. This was true, without exception, 
of all the Cabinet officers with whom I was 
personally brought into contact while on the 
Commission. Moreover, from their position 
and their sense of responsibility they are cer- 



l6 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

tain to refrain from violating the law them- 
selves and to try to secure at least a formal 
compliance with its demands on the part of 
their subordinates. In most cases it is 
necessary, however, to goad them contin- 
ually to see that they do not allow their 
subordinates to evade the law ; and it is very 
difficult to get either the President or the 
head of a department to punish these sub- 
ordinates- when they have evaded it. There 
is not much open violation of the law, be- 
cause such violation can be reached through 
the courts ; but in the small offices and small 
bureaus there is often a chance for an un- 
scrupulous head of the office or bureau to 
persecute his subordinates who are politi- 
cally opposed to him into resigning, or to 
trump up charges against them on which 
they can be dismissed. If this is done in 
a sufficient number of cases, men of the 
opposite political party think that it is use- 
less to enter the examinations ; and by stay- 
ing out they leave the way clear for the 
offender to get precisely the men he wishes 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 17 

for the eligible registers. Cases like this 
continually occur, and the Commission has 
to be vigilant in detecting and exposing 
them, and in demanding their punishment 
by the head of the office. The offender 
always, of course, insists that he has been 
misunderstood, and in most cases he can 
prepare quite a specious defence. As he is 
of the same political faith as the head of the 
department, and as he is certain to be backed 
by influential politicians, the head of the 
department is usually loath to act against 
him, and, if possible, will let him off with, 
at most, a warning not to repeat the offence. 
In some departments this kind of evasion 
has never been tolerated; and where the 
Commission has the force under its eye, as 
in the departments at Washington, the 
chance of injustice is minimized. Never- 
theless, there have been considerable abuses 
of this kind, notably in the custom-houses 
and post-offices, throughout the time I have 
been at Washington. So far as the Post- 
Office Department was concerned the 



i8 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

abuses were more flagrant under President 
Harrison's Postmaster-General, Mr. Wana- 
maker; but in the Treasury Department 
they were more flagrant under President 
Cleveland's Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. 
Carlisle. 

Congress has control of the appropria- 
tions for the Commission, and as it cannot 
do its work without an ample appropriation 
the action of Congress is vital to its wel- 
fare. Many, even of the friends of the sys- 
tem in the country at large, are astonish- 
ingly ignorant of who the men are who 
have battled most effectively for the law 
and for good government in either the Sen- 
ate or the Lower House. It is not only 
necessary that a man shall be good and pos- 
sess the desire to do decent things, but it is 
also necessary that he shall be courageous, 
practical, and efficient, if his work is to 
amount to anything. There is a good deal 
of rough-and-tumble fighting in Congress, 
as there is in all our political life, and a man 
is entirely out of place in it if he does not 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 19 

possess the virile qualities, and if he fails 
to show himself ready and able to hit back 
when assailed. Moreover, he must be alert, 
vigorous, and intelligent if he is going to 
make his work count. The friends of the 
Civil Service Law, like the friends of all 
other laws, would be in a bad way if they 
had to rely solely upon the backing of the 
timid good. During the last six years there 
have been, as there always are, a number 
of men in the House who believe in the 
Civil Service Law, and who vote for it if 
they understand the question and are pres- 
ent when it comes up, but who practically 
count for very little one way or the other, 
because they are timid or flighty, or are 
lacking in capacity for leadership or ability 
to see a point and to put it strongly before 
their associates. 

There is need of further legislation to 
perfect and extend the law and the system; 
but Congress has never been willing seri- 
ously to consider a proposition looking to 
this extension. Bills to provide for the ap- 



20 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

pointment of fourth-class postmasters have 
been introduced by Senator Lodge and 
others, but have never come to anything. 
Indeed, but once has a measure of this kind 
been reported from committee and fought 
for in either House. This was in the last 
session of the 53d Congress, when Senators 
Morgan and Lodge introduced bills to re- 
form the consular service. They were re- 
ferred to Senator Morgan's Committee on 
Foreign Affairs, and were favorably re- 
ported. Senator Lodge made a vigorous 
fight for them in the Senate, but he received 
little support, and was defeated, Senator 
Gorman leading the opposition. 

On the other hand, efforts to repeal the 
law, or to destroy it by new legislation, 
have uniformly been failures, and have 
rarely gone beyond committee. Occasion- 
ally, in an appropriation bill or some other 
measure, an amendment will be slipped 
through, adding forty or fifty employees to 
the classified service, or providing that the 
law shall not apply to them; but nothing 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 21 

important has ever been done in this way. 
But once has there been a resolute attack 
made on the law by legislation. This was 
in the 53d Congress, when Mr. Bynum, of 
Indiana, introduced in the House, and Mr. 
Vilas, of Wisconsin, pushed in the Senate, 
a bill to reinstate the Democratic railway 
mail clerks, turned out before the classifica- 
tion of the railway mail service in the early 
days of Mr. Harrison's administration. 

The classification of the railway mail 
service was ordered by President Cleveland 
less than two months before the expiration 
of his first term of office as President. It 
was impossible for the Commission to pre- 
pare and hold the necessary examinations 
and establish eligible registers prior to May 
I, 1889. President Harrison had been In- 
augurated on March 4th, and Postmaster- 
General Wanamaker permitted the spoils- 
men to take advantage of the necessary de- 
lay and turn out half of the employees who 
were Democrats, and replace them by Re- 
publicans. This was an outrageous act, de- 



22 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

serving the severe condemnation it received ; 
but it was perfectly legal. During the four 
years of Mr. Cleveland's first term a clean 
sweep was made of the railway mail service ; 
the employees who were almost all Repub- 
licans were turned out, and Democrats 
were put in their places. The result was 
utterly to demoralize the efficiency of the 
service. It had begun to recover from this 
when the change of administration took 
place in 1889. The time was too short to 
allow of a clean sweep, but the Republicans 
did all they could in two months, and turned 
out half of the Democrats. The law then 
went into effect, and since that time there 
have been no more removals for partisan 
purposes in that service. It has now re- 
covered from the demoralization into which 
it was thrown by the two political revolu- 
tions, and has reached a higher standard of 
efficiency than ever before. What was done 
by the Republicans in this service was re- 
peated, on a less scale, by the Democrats 
four years later in reference to the classi- 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 23 

fication of the small free-delivery post-of- 
fices. This classification was ordered by 
President Harrison two months before his 
term of ofiice expired; but in many of the 
offices it was impossible to hold examina- 
tions and prepare eligible registers until 
after the inauguration of President Cleve- 
land, and in a number of cases the incoming 
postmasters, who were appointed prior to 
the time when the law went into effect, took 
advantage of the delay to make clean sweeps 
of their offices. In one of these offices, 
where the men were changed in a body, 
the new appointees hired the men whom 
they replaced, at $35 a month apiece, to 
teach them their duties; in itself a suffi- 
cient comment on the folly of the spoils 
system. 

Mr. Bynum's bill provided for the rein- 
statement of the Democrats who were 
turned out by the Republicans just before 
the classification of the railway mail service. 
Of course such a bill was a mere partisan 
measure. There was no more reason for re- 



24 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

instating the Democrats thus turned out 
than for reinstating the RepubHcans who 
had been previously turned out that these 
same Democrats might get in, or for rein- 
stating the RepubHcans in the free-deUvery 
offices who had been turned out just before 
these offices were classified. If the bill had 
been enacted into law it would have been a 
most serious blow to the whole system, for 
it would have put a premium upon legisla- 
tion of the kind; and after every change 
of parties we should have seen the passing 
of laws to reinstate masses of Republicans 
or Democrats, as the case might be. This 
would have meant a return to the old system 
under a new form of procedure. Neverthe- 
less, Mr. Bynum's bill received the solid 
support of his party. Not a Democratic vote 
was cast against it in the House, none even 
of the Massachusetts Democrats being re- 
corded against it. In the Senate it was 
pushed by Mr. Vilas. By a piece of rather 
sharp parliamentary procedure he nearly got 
it through by unanimous consent. That it 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 25 

failed was owing entirely to the vigilance 
of Senator Lodge. Senator Vilas asked 
for the passage of the bill, on the ground 
that it was one of small importance, upoQ 
which his committee were agreed. When 
it was read the words " classified civil serv- 
ice " caught Senator Lodge's ear, and he in- 
sisted upon an explanation. On finding out 
what the bill was he at once objected to its 
consideration. Under this objection it could 
not then be considered. If it could have 
been brought to a vote it would undoubt- 
edly have passed ; but it was late in the ses- 
sion, the calendars were crowded with bills, 
and it was impossible to get it up in its 
regular order. Another effort was made, 
and was again frustrated by Senator Lodge, 
and the bill then died a natural death. 

In the final session of the 53d Congress 
a little incident occurred which deserves to 
be related in full, not for its own impor- 
tance, but because it affords an excellent 
example of the numerous cases which test 
the real efficiency of the friends of the re- 



26 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

form in Congress. It emphasizes the need 
of having, to watch over the interests of 
the laW; a man who is wiUing to fight, who 
knows the time to fight, and who knows 
how to fight. The secretary of the Com- 
mission was, in the original law of 1883, 
allowed a salary of $1600 a year. As the 
Commission's force and work have grown, 
the salary in successive appropriation bills 
for the last ten years has been provided for 
at the rate of $2000 a year. Many of the 
clerks under the secretary now receive 
$1800, so that it would be of course an 
absurdity to reduce him in salary below his 
subordinates. Scores of other officials of 
the Government, including, for instance, the 
President's private secretary, the First As- 
sistant Postmaster-General, the First As- 
sistant Secretary of State, etc., have had 
their salaries increased in successive appro- 
priation bills over the sum originally pro- 
vided, in precisely the same way that the 
salary of the secretary of the Commission 
.was increased. The 53d Congress was 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 27 

Democratic, as was the President, Mr. 
Cleveland, and the secretary of the Com- 
mission was himself a Democrat, who had 
been appointed to the position by Mr. Cleve- 
land during his first term as President. The 
rules of the House provide that there shall 
be no increase of salary beyond that pro- 
vided in existing law in any appropriation 
bill. When the appropriation for the Civil 
Service Commission came up in the House, 
Mr. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, made the 
point of order that to give $2000 to the 
secretary of the Commission was to in- 
crease his salary by $400 over that provided 
in the original law of 1883, and was there- 
fore out of order. He also produced a list 
of twenty or thirty other officers, including 
the President's private secretary, the First 
Assistant Postmaster-General, etc., whose 
salaries were similarly increased. He with- 
drew his point of order as regards these 
persons, but adhered to it as regards the sec- 
retary of the Commission. The chairman of 
the Committee of the Whole, Mr. O'Neill, 



28 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

of Massachusetts^ sustained the point of or- 
der; and not one person made any objection 
or made any fight, and the bill was put 
through the House with the secretary's sal- 
ary reduced. 

Now the point of order was probably ill 
taken anyhow. The existing law was and 
had been for ten years that the salary was 
$2000. But, in any event, had there been 
a single Congressman alert to the situation 
and willing to make a fight he could have 
stopped the whole movement by at once 
making a similar point of order against 
the President's private secretary, against 
the First Assistant Postmaster-General, the 
Assistant Secretary of State, and all the 
others involved. The House would of 
course have refused to cut down the sal- 
aries of all of these officials, and a resolute 
man, willing to insist that they should all 
go or none, could have saved the salary of 
the secretary of the Civil Service Commis- 
sion. There were plenty of men who would 
have done this if it had been pointed out to 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 29 

them; but no one did so, and Mr. Breckin- 
ridge's point of order was sustained, and the 
salary of the secretary reduced by $400. 
When it got over to the Senate, however, 
the Civil Service reformers had allies who 
needed but little coaching. In the first place, 
the sub-committee of the Committee on Ap- 
propriations, composed of Messrs. Teller, 
Cockrell, and Allison, to which the Civil 
Service Commission section of the Appro- 
priation bill was referred, restored the sal- 
ary to $2000; but Senator Gorman succeed- 
ed in carrying, by a bare majority, the Ap- 
propriations Committee against it, and it 
was reported to the full Senate still at 
$1600. The minute it got into the full Sen- 
ate, however. Senator Lodge had a fair 
chance at it, and it was known that he 
would receive ample support. All that he 
had to do was to show clearly the absolute 
folly of the provision thus put in by Mr. 
Breckinridge, and kept in by Mr. Gorman, 
and to make it evident that he intended to 
fight it resolutely. The opposition collapsed 



30 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

at once; the salary was put back at $2000, 
and the bill became a law in that form. 

Whether bad legislation shall be choked 
and good legislation forwarded depends 
largely upon the composition of the commit- 
tees on Civil Service reform of the Senate 
and the Lower House. The make-up of 
these committees is consequently of great 
importance. They are charged with the 
duty of investigating complaints against the 
Commission, and it is of course very impor- 
tant that if ever the Commission becomes 
corrupt or inefficient its shortcomings 
should be unsparingly exposed in Congress. 
On the other hand, it is equally important 
that the falsity of untruthful charges ad- 
vanced against it should be made public. 
In the 51st, 52d, and 53d Congresses a 
good deal of work was done by the Civil 
Service Committee of the House, and none 
at all by the corresponding committee of the 
Senate. The three chairmen of the House 
committee were Mr. Lehlbach, Mr. Andrew, 
and Mr. De Forest. All three were able and 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 31 

conscientious men and staunch supporters 
of the law. The chairman in the 52d Con- 
gress, Mr. John F. Andrew, was through- 
out his whole term of service one of the 
ablest, most fearless, and most effective 
champions of the cause of the reform in the 
House. Among the other members of the 
committee, in different Congresses, who 
stood up valiantly for the reform, were Mr. 
Hopkins, of Illinois, Mr. Butterworth, of 
Ohio, Mr. Boatner, of Louisiana, and Mr. 
Dargan and Mr. Brawley, of South Caro- 
lina. Occasionally there have been on the 
committee members who were hostile to 
the reform, such as Mr. Alderson, of West 
Virginia; but these have not been men car- 
rying weight in the House. The men of in- 
telligence and ability who once familiarize 
themselves with the workings of the system, 
as they are bound to do if they are on the 
committee, are sure to become its supporters. 
In both the 51st and the $26. Congresses 
charges were made against the Commission, 
and investigations were held into its actions 



$2 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

and into the workings of the~ law by the 
House committee. In each case, in its re- 
port the committee not only heartily ap- 
plauded the conduct of the Commission, but 
no less heartily approved the workings of 
the law, and submitted bills to increase the 
power of the Commission and to render the 
law still more wide-reaching and drastic, 
These bills, unfortunately^ were never acted 
on in the House. 

The main fight in each session comes on 
the Appropriation bill. There is not the 
slightest danger that the law will be re- 
pealed, and there is not much danger that 
any President will suffer it to be so laxly 
administered as to deprive it of all value; 
though there is always need to keep a 
vigilant lookout for fear of such lax ad- 
ministration. The danger-point is in the 
appropriations. The first Civil Service Com- 
mission, established in the days of President 
Grant, was starved out by Congress refus- 
ing to appropriate for it. A hostile Con- 
gress could repeat the same course now; 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 33 

and, as a mater of fact, in every Congress 
resolute efforts are made by the champions 
of foul government and dishonest politics 
to cut off the Commission's supplies. The 
bolder men, who come from districts where 
little is known of the law, and where there 
is no adequate expression of intelligent and 
honest opinion on the subject, attack it 
openly. They are always joined by a num- 
ber who make the attack covertly under 
some point of order, or because of a nominal 
desire for economy. These are quite as 
dangerous as the others, and deserve ex- 
posure. Every man interested in decent 
government should keep an eye on his Con- 
gressman and see how he votes on the ques- 
tion of appropriations for the Commission. 
The opposition to the reform is generally 
well led by skilled parliamentarians, and 
they fight with the vindictiveness natural to 
men who see a chance of striking at the in- 
stitution which has baffled their ferocious 
greed. As a rule, the rank and file are 
composed of politicians who could not rise 



34 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

in public life because of their attitude on any 
public question, and who derive most of 
their power from the skill with which they 
manipulate the patronage of their districts. 
These men have a gift at office-mongering, 
just as other men have a peculiar knack in 
picking pockets; and they are joined by all 
the honest dull men, who vote wrong out 
of pure ignorance, and by a very few sin- 
cere and intelligent, but wholly misguided 
people. Many of the spoils leaders are 
both efficient and fearless, and able to strike 
hard blows. In consequence, the leaders on 
the side of decency must themselves be men 
of ability and force, or the cause will suf- 
fer. For our good fortune, we have never 
yet lacked such leaders. 

The Appropriation committees, both in 
the House and Senate, almost invariably 
show a friendly disposition toward the law. 
They are composed of men of prominence, 
who have a sense of the responsibilities of 
their positions and an earnest desire to do 
well for the country and to make an hon- 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 35 

orable record for their party in matters of 
legislation. They are usually above resort- 
ing to the arts of low cunning or of sheer 
demagogy to which the foes of the reform 
system are inevitably driven, and in conse- 
quence they can be relied upon to give, if 
not what is needed, at least enough to pre- 
vent any retrogression. It is in the open 
House and in Committee of the Whole that 
the fight is waged. The most dangerous 
fight occurs in Committee of the Whole, for 
there the members do not vote by aye and 
no, and in consequence a mean politician 
who wishes ill to the law, but is afraid of 
his constituents, votes against it in com- 
mittee, but does not dare to do so when the 
ayes and noes are called in the House. One 
result of this has been that more than once 
the whole appropriation has been stricken 
out in Committee of the Whole, and then 
voted back again by substantial majorities 
by the same men sitting in open House. 

In the debate on the appropriation the 
whole question of the workings of the law 



36 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

is usually discussed, and those members who 
are opposed to it attack not only the law it- 
self, but the Commission which administers 
it. The occasion is, therefore, invariably 
seized as an opportunity for a pitched bat- 
tle between the friends and foes of the sys- 
tem, the former trying to secure such an 
increase of appropriation as will permit the 
Commission to extend its work^ and the 
latter striving to abolish the law outright 
by refusing all appropriations. In the 51st 
and 52d Congresses, Mr. Lodge, of Massa- 
chusetts, led the fight for the reform in the 
Lower House. He was supported by such 
party leaders as Messrs. Reed, of Maine, 
and McKinley, of Ohio, among the Repub- 
licans, and Messrs. Wilson, of West Vir- 
ginia, and Sayers, of Texas, among the 
Democrats. Among the other champions 
of the law on the floor of the House were 
Messrs. Hopkins and Butterworth, Mr. 
Greenhalge, of Massachusetts, Mr. Hender- 
son, of Iowa, Messrs. Payne, Tracey, and 
Coombs, of New York. I wish I had the 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 37 

space to chronicle the names of all, and to 
give a complete list of those who voted for 
the law. Among the chief opponents of it 
were Messrs. Spinola, of New York, Enloe, 
of Tennessee, Stockdale, of Mississippi, 
Grosvenor, of Ohio, and Bowers, of Cali- 
fornia. The task of the defenders of the 
law was, in one way easy, for they had no 
arguments to meet, the speeches of their 
adversaries being invariably divisible into 
mere declamation and direct misstatement of 
facts. In the Senate, Senators Hoar, of 
Massachusetts, Allison, of Iowa, Hawley, 
of Connecticut, Wolcott, of Colorado, Per- 
kins, of California, Cockrell, of Missouri, 
and Butler, of South Carolina, always sup- 
ported the Commission against unjust at- 
tack. Senator Gorman was naturally the 
chief leader of the assaults upon the Com- 
mission. Senators Harris, Plumb, Stewart, 
and Ingalls were among his allies. 

In each session the net result of the fight 
was an increase in the appropriation for 
the Commission. The most important in- 



38 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

crease was that obtained in the first session 
of the 53d Congress. On this occasion Mr. 
Lodge was no longer in the House, having 
been elected to the Senate. The work of 
the Commission had grown so that it was 
impossible to perform it without a great 
increase of force; and it would have been 
impossible to have put into effect the ex- 
tensions of the classified service had this 
increase not been allowed. In the House 
the Committee on Appropriations, of which 
Mr. Sayers was chairman, allowed the in- 
crease, but it was stricken out in the House 
itself after an acrimonious debate, in which 
the cause of the law was sustained by 
Messrs. Henderson and Hopkins, Mr. Mc- 
Call, of Massachusetts, Mr. Coombs, Mr. 
Crain, of Texas, Mr. Storer, of Ohio, and 
many others, while the spoils-mongers were 
led by Messrs. Stockdale and WiUiams, of 
Mississippi, Pendelton, of West Virginia, 
Fithian, of Illinois, and others less impor- 
tant. 

When the bill went over to the Senate, 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 39 

however, Mr. Lodge, well supported by 
Messrs. Allison, Cockrell, Wolcott, and 
Teller, had the provision for the increase of 
appropriation for the Commission restored 
and increased, thereby adding by one half 
to the efficiency of the Commission's work. 
Had it not been for this the Commission 
would have been quite unable to have under- 
taken the extensions recently ordered by 
President Cleveland. 

It is noteworthy that the men who have 
done most effective work for the law in 
Washington in the departments, and more 
especially in the House and Senate, are 
men of spotless character, who show by 
their whole course in public life that they 
are not only able and resolute, but also de- 
voted to a high ideal. Much of what they 
have done has received little comment in 
public, because much of the work in com- 
mittee, and some of the work in the House, 
such as making or combating points of or- 
der, and pointing out the danger or merit 
of certain bills, is not of a kind readily un- 



40 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

derstood or appreciated by an outsider; yet 
no men have deserved better of the country, 
for there is in American public Hfe no one 
other cause so fruitful of harm to the body- 
politic as the spoils system, and the legis- 
lators and administrative officers who have 
done the best work toward its destruction 
merit a peculiar meed of praise from all 
well-wishers of the Republic. 

I have spoken above of the good that 
would come from a thorough and intelligent 
knowledge as to who were the friends and 
who were the foes of the law in Washing- 
ton. Departmental officers, the heads of 
bureaus, and, above all, the Commissioners 
themselves, should be carefully watched by 
all friends of the reform. They should be 
supported when they do well, and con- 
demned when they do ill; and attention 
should be called not only to what they do, 
but to what they fail to do. To an even 
greater extent, of course, this applies to the 
President. As regards the Senators and 
Congressmen also there is urgent need of 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 41 

careful supervision by the friends of the 
law. We need criticism by those who are 
unable to do their part in action; but the 
criticism, to be useful, must be both honest 
and intelligent, and the critics must remem- 
ber that the system has its staunch friends 
and bitter foes among both party men and 
men of no party — among Republicans, 
Democrats, and Independents. Each Con- 
gressman should be made to feel that it is 
his duty to support the law, and that he will 
be held to account if he fails to support it. 
Especially is it necessary to concentrate ef- 
fort in working for each step of reform. In 
legislative matters, for instance, there is 
need of increase of appropriations for the 
Commission, and there is a chance of put- 
ting through the bill to reform the Consular 
service. This has received substantial back- 
ing in the Senate, and has the support of 
the majority of the Foreign Affairs Com- 
mittee. Instead of wasting efforts by a 
diffuse support of eight or ten bills, it would 
be well to bend every energy to securing the 



42 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

passage of the Consular bill ; and to do this 
it is necessary to arouse not only the Civil 
Service Reform Associations, but the 
Boards of Trade throughout the country, 
and to make the Congressmen and Senators 
feel individually the pressure from those of 
their constituents who are resolved no 
longer to tolerate the peculiarly gross man- 
ifestation of the spoils system which now 
obtains in the consular service, with its at- 
tendant discredit to the national honor 
abroad. 

People sometimes grow a little down- 
hearted about the reform. When they feel 
in this mood it would be well for them to 
reflect on what has actually been gained in 
the past si: : years. By the inclusion of the 
railway mail service, the smaller free-de- 
livery offices, the Indian School service, the 
Internal Revenue service, and other less im- 
portant branches, the extent of the public 
service which is under the protection of the 
law has been more than doubled, and there 
are now nearly fifty thousand employees of 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 43 

the Federal Government who have been 
withdrawn from the degrading influences 
that rule under the spoils system. This of 
itself is a great success and a great advance, 
though, of course, it ought only to spur us 
on to renewed effort. In the fall of 1894 
the people of the State of New York, by a 
popular vote, put into their constitution a 
provision providing for a merit system in 
the affairs of the State and its municipali- 
ties ; and the following spring the great city 
of Chicago voted, by an overwhelming ma- 
jority, in favor of applying in its municipal 
affairs the advanced and radical Civil Serv- 
ice Reform Law, which had already passed 
the Illinois Legislature. Undoubtedly, after 
every success there comes a moment of re- 
action. The friends of the reform grow 
temporarily lukewarm, or, because it fails 
to secure everything they hoped, they neg- 
lect to lay proper stress upon all that it does 
secure. Yet, in spite of all rebuffs, in spite 
of all disappointments and opposition, the 
growth of the principle of Civil Service re- 



44 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

form has been continually more rapid, and 
every year has taken us measurably nearer 
that ideal of pure and decent government 
which is dear to the heart of every honest 
American citizen. 



II 

ADMINISTERING THE NEW 
YORK POLICE FORCE ^ 

IN New York, in the fall of 1894, Tam- 
many Hall was overthrown by a coali- 
tion composed partly of the regular repub- 
licans, partly of anti-Tammany democrats, 
and partly of independents. Under the lat- 
ter head must be included a great many men 
who in national politics habitually act witn 
one or the other of the two great parties, 
but who feel that in municipal politics good 
citizens should act independently. The tidal 
wave, which was running high against the 
democratic party, was undoubtedly very in- 
fluential in bringing about the anti-Tam- 
many victory; but the chief factor in 
producing the result was the wide-spread 
anger and disgust felt by decent citizens at 
^ Atlantic MontJily, September, 1S97. 



46 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

the corruption which, under the sway of 
Tammany, had honey-combed every depart- 
ment of the city government, but especially 
the police force. A few well-meaning people 
have at times tried to show that this cor- 
ruption was not so very great. In reality 
it would be difficult to overestimate the utter 
rottenness of many branches of the city 
administration. There were a few honor- 
able and high-minded Tammany officials, 
and there were a few bureaus which were 
administered with more or less efficiency, 
although dishonestly. But the corruption 
had become so wide-spread as seriously to 
impair the work of administration, and to 
bring us back within measurable distance of 
the days of Tweed. 

The chief centre of corruption was the 
Police Department. No man not intimately 
acquainted with both the lower and hum- 
bler sides of New York life — for there is a 
wide distinction between the two — can real- 
ize how far this corruption extended. Ex- 
cept in rare instances, where prominent pol- 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 47 

iticians made demands which could not be 
refused, both promotions and appointments 
towards the close of Tammany rule were 
made almost solely for money, and the prices 
were discussed with cynical frankness. 
There was a well-recognized tariff of 
charges, ranging from two or three hundred 
dollars for appointment as a patrolman, to 
twelve or fifteen thousand dollars for pro- 
motion to the position of captain. The 
money was reimbursed to those who paid 
it by an elaborate system of blackmail. This 
was chiefly carried on at the expense of 
gamblers, liquor sellers, and keepers of dis- 
orderly houses ; but every form of vice and 
crime contributed more or less, and a great 
many respectable people who were ignorant 
or timid were blackmailed under pretence of 
forbidding or allowing them to violate ob- 
scure ordinances and the like. From top to 
bottom the New York police force was ut- 
terly demoralized by the gangrene of such 
a system, where venality and blackmail 
went hand in hand with the basest forms 



48 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

of low ward politics, and where the police- 
man, the ward politician, the liquor seller, 
and the criminal alternately preyed on one 
another and helped one another to prey on 
the general public. 

In May, 1895, I was made president of 
the newly appointed police board, whose 
duty it was to cut out the chief source of 
civic corruption in New York by cleansing 
the police department. The police board 
consisted of four members. All four of the 
new men were appointed by Mayor Strong, 
the reform Mayor, who had taken office in 
January. 

With me, was associated, as treasurer of 
the Board, Mr. Avery D. Andrews. He 
was a democrat and I a republican, and 
there were questions of national politics on 
which we disagreed widely; but such ques- 
tions could not enter into the administration 
of the New York police, if that administra- 
tion was to be both honest and efficient ; and 
as a matter of fact, during my two years' 
service, Mr. Andrews and I worked in ab- 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 49 

solute harmony on every important question 
of policy which arose. The prevention of 
blackmail and corruption, the repression of 
crime and violence, safeguarding of life and 
property, securing honest elections, and re- 
warding efficient and punishing inefficient 
police service, are not, and cannot properly 
be made, questions of party difference. In 
other words, such a body as the police force 
of New York can be' wisely and properly 
administered only upon a non-partisan basis, 
and both Mr. Andrews and myself were 
quite incapable of managing it on any other. 
There were many men who helped us in 
our work; and among them all, the man 
who helped us most, by advice and counsel, 
by stalwart, loyal friendship, and by ardent 
championship of all that was good against 
all that was evil, was Jacob A. Riis, the 
author of How the Other Half Lives. 

Certain of the difficulties we had to face 
were merely those which confronted the en- 
tire reform administration in its manage- 
ment of the municipality. Many worthy 



5° THE NEW YORK POLICE 

people expected that this reform administra- 
tion would work an absolute revolution, not 
merely in the government, but in the minds 
of the citizens as a whole; and felt vaguely 
that they had been cheated because there 
was not an immediate cleansing of every 
bad influence in civic or social life. More- 
over, the different bodies forming the vic- 
torious coalition felt the pressure of conflict- 
ing interests and hopes. The mass of effec- 
tive strength was given by the republican 
organization, and not only all the enrolled 
party workers, but a great number of well- 
meaning republicans who had no personal 
interest at stake, expected the administra- 
tion to be used to further the fortunes of 
their own party. Another great body of the 
administration's supporters took a diamet- 
rically opposite view, and believed that the 
administration should be administered 
without the least reference whatever to 
party. In theory they were quite right, and 
I cordially sympathized with them; but as 
a matter of fact the victory could not have 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 5^ 

been won by the votes of this class of people 
alone, and it was out of the question to put 
these theories into complete effect. Like all 
other men who actually try to do things in- 
stead of confining themselves to saying 
how they should be done, the members of 
the new city government were obliged to 
face the facts and to do the best they could 
in the effort to get some kind of good result 
out of the conflicting forces. They had to 
disregard party so far as was possible ; and 
yet they could not afford to disregard all 
party connections so utterly as to bring the 
whole administration to grief. 

In addition to these two large groups of 
supporters of the administration, there were 
other groups, also possessing influence who 
expected to receive recognition distinctly as 
democrats, but as anti-Tammany democrats ; 
and such members of any victorious coali- 
tion are always sure to overestimate their 
own services, and to feel ill-treated. 

It is of course an easy thing to show on 
paper that the municipal administration 



52 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

should have been administered without the 
sHghtest reference to national party lines, 
and if the bulk of the people saw things 
with entire clearness the truth would seem 
so obvious as to need no demonstration. 
But as a matter of fact the bulk of the 
people who voted the new administration 
into power neither saw this nor realized it, 
and in politics, as in life generally, condi- 
tions must be faced as they are, and not as 
they ought to be. The regular democratic 
organization, not only in the city but in the 
State, was completely under the dominion of 
Tammany Hall and its allies, and they 
fought us at every step with wholly un- 
scrupulous hatred. In the State and the 
city alike the democratic campaign was 
waged against the reform administration in 
New York. The Tammany officials who 
were still left in power in the city, headed 
by the comptroller, Mr. Fitch, did every- 
thing in their power to prevent the efficient 
administration of the government. The 
democratic members of the Legislature 



THE NEW. YORK POLICE 53 

acted as their faithful alHes in all such ef- 
forts. Whatever was accomplished by the 
reform administration — and a very great 
deal was accomplished — was due to the ac- 
tion of the republican majority in the con- 
stitutional convention, and especially to the 
republican Governor, Mr. Morton, and the 
republican majority in the Legislature, who 
enacted laws giving to the newly chosen 
Mayor, Mr. Strong, the great powers neces- 
sary for properly administering his office. 
Without these laws the Mayor would have 
been very nearly powerless. He certainly 
could not have done a tenth part of what 
actually was done. 

Now, of course, the republican politicians 
who gave Mayor Strong all these powers, 
in the teeth of violent democratic opposi- 
tion to every law for the betterment of civic 
conditions in New York, ought not, under 
ideal conditions, to have expected the 
slightest reward. They should have been 
contented with showing the public that their 
only purpose was to serve the public, and 



54 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

that the repubhcan party wished no better 
reward than the consciousness of having 
done its duty by the State and the city. But 
as a whole they had not reached such a 
standard. There were some who had 
reached it; there were others who, though 
perfectly honest, and wishing to see good 
government prosper, yet felt that somehow 
it ought to be combined with party advan- 
tage of a tangible sort; and finally, there 
were yet others who were not honest at all 
and cared nothing for the victory unless it 
resulted in some way to their own personal 
advantage. In short, the problem presented 
was of the kind which usually is presented 
when dealing with men as a mass. The 
Mayor and his aaministration had to keep 
in touch with the republican party or they 
could have accomplished nothing; and on 
the other hand there was much that the re- 
publican machine asked which they could 
not do, because a surrender on certain vital 
points meant the abandonment of the effort 
to obtain good administration. 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 55 

The undesirability of breaking with the 
repubHcan organization was shown by what 
happened in the administration of the poHce 
department. This being the great centre of 
power was the especial object of the repub- 
lican machine leaders. Toward the close of 
Tammany rule, of the four Police Commis- 
sioners, two had been machine republicans, 
whose actions were in no wise to be dis- 
tinguished from those of their Tammany 
colleagues; and immediately after the new- 
board was appointed to office the machine 
got through the Legislature the so-called 
bi-partisan or Lexow law^ under which the 
department is at present administered; and 
a more foolish or vicious law was never en- 
acted by any legislative body. It modelled 
the government of the police force some- 
what on the lines of the Polish parliament, 
and it was avowedly designed to make it 
difficult to get effective action. It provided 
for a four-headed board, so that it was dif- 
ficult to get a majority anyhow; but, lest 
,we should get such a majority, it gave 



56 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

each member power to veto the actions of 
his colleagues in certain very important 
matters; and, lest we should do too much 
when we were unanimous, it provided that 
the chief, our nominal subordinate, should 
have entirely independent action in the most 
important matters, and should be practically 
irremovable, except for proved corruption; 
so that he was responsible to nobody. The 
Mayor was similarly hindered from remov- 
ing any Police Commissioner, so that when 
one of our colleagues began obstructing the 
work of the board, and thwarting its effort 
to reform the force, the Mayor in vain 
strove to turn him out. In short, there was 
a complete divorce of power and responsi- 
bility, and it was exceedingly difficult 
either to do anything, or to place anywhere, 
the responsibility for not doing it. 

If, by any reasonable concessions, if, in- 
deed, by the performance of any act not in- 
compatible with our oaths of office, we could 
have stood on good terms with the machine, 
we would certainly have made the effort, even 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 57 

at the cost of sacrificing many of our ideals ; 
and in almost any other department we 
could probably have avoided a break, but in 
the police force such a compromise was not 
possible. What was demanded of us usually 
took some such form as the refusal to en- 
force certain laws, or the protection of cer- 
tain law-breakers, or the promotion of the 
least fit men to positions of high power and 
grave responsibility; and on such points it 
was not possible to yield. We were obliged 
to treat all questions that arose purely on 
their merits, without reference to the de- 
sires of the politicians. We went into this 
course with our eyes open, for we knew the 
trouble it would cause us personally, and, 
what was far more important, the way in 
which our efforts for reform would conse- 
quently be hampered. However, there was 
no alternative, and we had to abide by the 
result. We had counted the cost before we 
adopted our course, and we followed it 
resolutely to the end. We could not ac- 
complish all that we should have liked to 



58 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

accomplish for we were shackled by pre- 
posterous legislation, and by the opposition 
and intrigues of the basest machine politi- 
cians, which cost us the support, sometimes 
of one, and sometimes of both, of our col- 
leagues. Nevertheless, the net result of our 
two years of work was that we did more 
to increase the efficiency and honesty of the 
police department than had ever previously 
been done in its history. 

But a decent people will have to show by 
emphatic action that they are in the ma- 
jority if they wish this result to be per- 
manent ; for under such a law as the " bi- 
partisan " law it is almost impossible to 
keep the department honest and efficient for 
any length of time; and the machine poli- 
ticians, by their opposition outside the 
board, and by the aid of any tool or ally 
whom they can get on the board, can al- 
ways hamper and cripple the honest 
members of the board, no matter how reso- 
lute and able the latter may be, if they do 



THE NEW, YORK POLICE 59 

not have an aroused and determined public 
opinion behind them. 

Besides suffering, in aggravated form, 
from the difficulties which beset the course 
of the entire administration, the police board 
had to encounter — and honest and efficient 
police boards must always encounter — cer- 
tain special and peculiar difficulties. It is 
not a pleasant thing to deal with criminals 
and purveyors of vice. It is very rough 
work, and it cannot always be done in a nice 
manner. The man with the night stick, the 
man in the blue coat with the helmet, can 
keep order and repress open violence on the 
streets; but most kinds of crime and vice 
are ordinarily carried on furtively and by 
stealth, perhaps at night, perhaps behind 
closed doors. It is possible to reach them 
only by the employment of the man in plain 
clothes, the detective. Now the function of 
the detective is primarily that of the spy, 
and it is always easy to arouse feeling 
against a spy. It is absolutely necessary to 



6o THE NEW YORK POLICE 

employ him. Ninety per cent, of the most 
dangerous criminals and purveyors of vice 
cannot be reached in any other way. But 
the average citizen who does not think 
deeply fails to realize the necessity for any 
such employment. In a vague way he de- 
sires vice and crime put down; but, also 
in a vague way, he objects to the only pos- 
sible means by which they can be put down. 
It is easy to mislead him into denouncing 
what is necessarily done in order to carry 
out the very policy for which he is clamor- 
ing. The Tammany officials of New York, 
headed by the Comptroller, made a syste- 
matic effort to excite public hostility against 
the police for their warfare on vice. The 
law-breaking liquor seller, the keeper of dis- 
orderly houses, and the gambler, had been 
influential allies of Tammany, and head 
contributors to its campaign chest. Nat- 
urally Tammany fought for them; and the 
effective way in which to carry on such a 
fight was to portray with gross exaggera- 
tion and misstatement the methods neces- 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 6l 

sarily employed by every police force which 
honestly endeavors to do its work. The 
methods are unpleasant, just as the methods 
employed in any surgical operation are un- 
pleasant ; and the Tammany champions were 
able to arouse more or less feeling against 
the police board for precisely the same 
reason that a century ago it was easy to 
arouse what were called " doctors' mobs " 
against surgeons who cut up dead bodies. 
In neither case is the operation attractive, 
and it is one which readily lends itself to 
denunciation; but in both cases it is neces- 
sary if there is a real intention to get at the 
disease. Tammany of course found its best 
allies in the sensational newspapers. Of all 
the forces that tend for evil in a great, city 
like New York, probably none are so potent 
as the sensational papers. Until one has 
had experience with them it is difficult fo 
realize the reckless indifference to truth or 
decency displayed by papers such as the 
two that have the largest circulation in New 
York City. Scandal forms the breath of 



62 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

the nostrils of such papers, and they are 
quite as ready to create as to describe it. To 
sustain law and order is humdrum, and does 
not readily lend itself to flaunting woodcuts ; 
but if the editor will stoop, and make his 
subordinates stoop, to raking the gutters of 
human depravity, to upholding the wrong- 
doer, and furiously assailing what is upright 
and honest, he can make money, just as 
other types of pander make it. The man 
who is to do honorable work in any form 
of civic politics must make up his mind (and 
if he is a man of properly robust character 
he will make it up without difficulty) to 
treat the assaults of papers like these with 
absolute indifference, and to go his way un- 
heeded. Indeed he will have to make up 
his mind to be criticised, sometimes justly, 
and more often unjustly, even by decent 
people; and he must not be so thin-skinned 
as to mind such criticism overmuch. 

In administering the police force we 
found, as might be expected, that there was 
no need of genius, nor indeed of any very 



THE NEW, YORK POLICE 63 

unusual qualities. What was needed was 
exercise of the plain, ordinary virtues, of a 
rather commonplace type, which all good 
citizens should be expected to possess. 
Common sense, common honesty, courage, 
energy, resolution, readiness to learn, and a 
desire to be as pleasant with everybody as 
was compatible with a strict performing of 
duty — these were the qualities most called 
for. We soon found that, in spite of the 
wide-spread corruption which had obtained 
in the New York police department, the 
bulk of the men were heartily desirous of 
being honest. There were some who were 
incurably dishonest, just as there were some 
who had remained decent in spite of terrific 
temptation and pressure ; but the great mass 
came in between. Although not possessing 
the stamina to war against corruption when 
the odds seemed well-nigh hopeless, they 
were nevertheless heartily glad to be decent 
and to welcome the change to a system un- 
der which they were rewarded for doing 
well, and punished for doing ill. 



^4 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

Our methods for restoring order and dis- 
cipline were simple, and indeed so were our 
methods for securing efficiency. We made 
frequent personal inspections, especially at 
night, turning up anywhere, at any time. 
We thus speedily got an idea of whom 
among our upper subordinates we could 
trust and whom we could not. We then 
proceeded to punish those guilty of short- 
comings, and to reward those who did well, 
refusing to pay any heed whatever in either 
case to anything except the man's own char- 
acter and record. A very few of these pro- 
motions and dismissals sufficed to show our 
subordinates that at last they were dealing 
with superiors who meant what they said, 
and that the days of political " pull " were 
over while we had the power. The effect 
was immediate. The decent men took heart, 
and those who were not decent feared longer 
to offend. The morale of the entire force 
improved steadily. 

A similar course was followed in reference 
to the relations between the police and citi- 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 65 

zens generally. There had formerly been 
much complaint of the brutal treatment by 
police of innocent citizens. This was stop- 
ped peremptorily by the simple expedient of 
dismissing from the force the first two or 
three men who were found guilty of brutal- 
ity. On the other hand we made the force 
understand that in the event of any emer- 
gency requiring them to use their weapons 
against either a mob or an individual crim- 
inal, the police board backed them up with- 
out reservation. Our sympathy was for the 
friends, and not the foes, of order. If a mob 
threatened violence we were glad to have 
the mob hurt. If a criminal showed fight 
we expected the officer to use any weapon 
that was necessary to overcome him on the 
instant ; and even, if it became necessary, to 
take life. All that the board required was to 
be convinced that the necessity really ex- 
isted. We did not possess a particle of that 
maudlin sympathy for the criminal, disor- 
derly, and lawless classes which is such a 
particularly unhealthy sign of social develop- 



66 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

ment ; and we were bound that the improve- 
ment in the fighting efficiency of the poHce 
should go hand in hand with the improve- 
ment in their moral tone. 

To break up the system of blackmail and 
corruption was less easy. It was not at all 
difficult to protect decent people in their 
rights, and this was accomplished at once. 
But the criminal who is blackmailed has a di- 
rect interest in paying the blackmailer, and 
it is not easy to get information about it. 
Nevertheless, we put a complete stop to 
most of the blackmail by the simple process 
of rigorously enforcing the laws, not only 
against crime, but against vice. 

It was the enforcement of the liquor law 
which caused most excitement. In New 
York we suffer from the altogether too com- 
mon tendency to make any law which a cer- 
tain section of the community wants, and 
then to allow that law to be more or less of 
a dead letter if any other section of the com- 
munity objects to it. The multiplication of 
laws by the Legislature, and their partial en- 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 67 

forcement by the executive authorities, go 
hand in hand, and offer one of the many se- 
rious problems with which we are confronted 
in striving to better civic conditions. New 
York State felt that liquor should not be sold 
on Sunday. The larger part of New York 
City wished to drink liquor on Sunday. Any 
man who studies the social condition of the 
poor knows that liquor works more ruin than 
any other one cause. He knows also, how- 
ever, that it is simply impracticable to extir- 
pate the habit entirely, and that to attempt 
too much often merely results in accomplish- 
ing too little ; and he knows, moreover, that 
for a man alone to drink whiskey in a bar- 
room is one thing, and for men with their 
families to drink light wines or beer in re- 
spectable restaurants is quite a different 
thing. The average citizen, who doesn't 
think at all, and the average politician of the 
baser sort, who only thinks about his own 
personal advantage, find it easiest to disre- 
gard these facts, and to pass a liquor law 
which will please the temperance people, and 



68 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

then trust to the poHce department to enforce 
it with such laxity as to please the intemper- 
ate. 

The results of this pleasing system were 
evident in New York when our board came 
into power. The Sunday liquor law was by 
no means a dead letter in New York City. 
On the contrary no less than eight thousand 
arrests for its violation had been made under 
the Tammany regime the year before we 
came in. It was very much alive ; but it was 
only executed against those who either had 
no political pull, or who refused to pay 
money. The liquor business does not stand 
on the same footing with other occupations. 
It always tends to produce criminality in the 
population at large^ and law-breaking among 
the saloonkeepers themselves. It is abso- 
lutely necessary to supervise it rigidly, and 
impose restrictions upon the traffic. In 
large cities the traffic cannot be stopped ; but 
the evils can at least be minimized. 

In New York the saloonkeepers have al- 
ways stood high among professional politi- 



THE NEW^ YORK POLICE 69 

cians. Nearly two-thirds of the poUtical 
leaders of Tammany Hall have, at one time 
or another, been in the liquor business. The 
saloon is the natural club and meeting place 
for the ward heelers and leaders, and the bar- 
room politician is one of the most common 
and best recognized factors, in local political 
government. The saloonkeepers are always 
hand in glove with the professional politi- 
cians, and occupy toward them a position 
such as is not held by any other class of men. 
The influence they wield in local politics has 
always been very great, and until our board 
took office no man ever dared seriously to 
threaten them for their flagrant violations 
of the law. The powerful and influential 
saloonkeeper was glad to see his neighbors 
closed, for it gave him business. On the 
other hand, a corrupt police captain, or the 
corrupt politician who controlled him, could 
always extort money from a saloonkeeper by 
threatening to close him and let his neighbor 
remain open. Gradually the greed of cor- 
rupt police officials and of corrupt politi- 



70 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

cians, grew by what it fed on, until they be- 
gan to blackmail all but the very most influ- 
ential liquor sellers; and as liquor sellers 
were very numerous, and the profits of the 
liquor business great, the amount collected 
was enormous. 

The reputable saloonkeepers themselves 
found this condition of blackmail and po- 
litical favoritism almost intolerable. The 
law which we found on the statute books had 
been put on by a Tammany Legislature three 
years before we took office. A couple of 
months after we took office, Mr. J. P. Smith, 
the editor of the liquor-dealers' organ, The 
Wine and Spirit Gazette, gave out the fol- 
lowing interview, which is of such an extra- 
ordinary character, that I insert it almost in 
full: 

*' Governor Flower, as well as the Legisla- 
ture of 1892, was elected upon distinct 
pledges that relief would be given by the 
Democratic party to the liquor dealers, es- 
pecially of the cities of the State. In accord- 
ance with this promise a Sunday-opening 



THE NEW YORK POLICE n 

clause was inserted in the excise bill of 
1892. Governor Flower then said that 
he could not approve the Sunday-opening 
clause; whereupon the Liquor Dealers' 
Association, which had charge of the bill, 
struck the Sunday-opening clause out. 
After Governor Hill had been elected for 
the second term I had several interviews 
with him on that very subject. He told 
me, ' You know I am the friend of the 
liquor dealers and will go to almost any 
length to help them and give them relief; 
but do not ask me to recommend to the 
Legislature the passage of the law opening 
the saloons on Sunday. I cannot do it, for it 
will ruin the Democratic party in the State.' 
He gave the same interview to various mem- 
bers of the State Liquor Dealers' Associa- 
tion, who waited upon him for the purpose 
of getting relief from the blackmail of the 
police, stating that the lack of havin-g the 
Sunday question properly regulated was at 
the bottom of the trouble. Blackmail had 
been brought to such a state of perfection, 



72 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

and had become so oppressive to the liquor 
dealers themselves, that they communicated 
first with Governor Hill and then with Mr. 
Croker. The Wine and Spirit Gazette had 
taken up the subject because of gross dis- 
crimination made by the police in the en- 
lorcement of the Sunday-closing law. The 
paper again and again called upon the police 
commissioners to either uniformly enforce 
the law or uniformly disregard it. A com- 
mittee of the Central Association of Liquor 
Dealers of this city then took up the matter 
and called upon Police Commissioner Mar- 
tin.* An agreement was then made be- 
tween the leaders of Tammany Hall and 
the liquor dealers, according to which the 
monthly blackmail paid to the police should 
be discontiiiiied in return for political sup- 
port,^ In other words, the retail dealers 
should bind themselves to solidly support 
the Tammany ticket in consideration of the 

* My predecessor in the Presidency of the Po- 
lice Board. 

* The itaHcs are my own. 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 73 

discontinuance of the monthly blackmail by 
the police. This agreement was carried out. 
Now what was the consequence? If the 
liquor dealer, after the monthly blackmail 
ceased, showed any signs of independence, 
the Tammany Hall district leader would 
give the tip to the police captain, and that 
man would be pulled and arrested on the 
following Sunday." 

Continuing, Mr. Smith inveighed against 
the law, but said : 

" The (present) police commissioners are 
honestly endeavoring to have the law im- 
partially carried out. They are no respec- 
ters of persons. And our information from 
all classes of liquor-dealers is that the rich 
and the poor, the influential and the unin- 
fluential, are required equally to obey the 
law.'' 

There is really some difficulty in com- 
menting upon the statements of this inter- 
view, statements which were never denied. 

The law was not in the least a dead-letter ; 
it was enforced, but it was corruptly and 



74 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

partially enforced. It was a prominent fac- 
tor in the Tammany scheme of government. 
It afforded a most effective means for black- 
mailing a large portion of the liquor sellers 
and for the wholesale corruption of the 
police department. The high Tammany of- 
ficials and police captains and patrolmen 
blackmailed and bullied the small liquor 
sellers without a pull, and turned them into 
abject slaves of Tammany Hall. On the 
other hand, the wealthy and politically in- 
fluential liquor sellers controlled the police, 
and made or marred captains, sergeants, 
and patrolmen at their pleasure. In some 
of the precincts most of the saloons were 
closed ; in others almost all were open. The 
rich and powerful liquor seller violated the 
law at will, unless he had fallen under the 
ban of the police or the ward boss, when he 
was not allowe.d to violate it at all. 

Under these circumstances the new police 
board had one of two courses to follow. 
iWe could either instruct the police to allow 
all the saloonkeepers to become law- 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 75 

breakers, or else we could instruct them to 
allow none to be law-breakers. We fol- 
lowed the latter course, because we had 
some regard for our oaths of office. For 
two or three months we had a regular fight, 
and on Sundays had to employ half the 
force to enforce the liquor law; for the 
Tammany legislators had drawn the law so 
as to make it easy of enforcement for pur- 
poses of blackmail, but not easy of enforce- 
ment generally, certain provisions being de- 
liberately inserted with the intention to 
make it difficult of universal execution. 
However, when once the liquor sellers and 
their allies understood that we had not 
the slightest intention of being bullied, 
threatened or cajoled out of following the 
course which we had laid down, resistance 
practically ceased. During the year after 
we took office the number of arrests for 
violation of the Sunday liquor law sank to 
about one half of what they had been during 
the last year of the Tammany rule ; and yet 
the saloons were practically closed, whereas 



76 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

under Tammany most of them had been 
open. We adopted no new methods, save 
in so far as honesty could be called a new- 
method. We did not enforce the law with 
unusual severity; we merely enforced it 
against the man with a pull, just as much 
as against the man without a pull. We re- 
fused to discriminate in favor of influential 
law-breakers. The professional politicians 
of low type, the liquor sellers, the editors of 
some German newspapers, and the sensa- 
tional press generally, attacked us with a 
ferocity which really verged on insanity. 

We went our way without regarding 
this opposition, and gave a very wholesome 
lesson to the effect that a law should not be 
put on the statute books if it was not meant 
to be enforced, and that even an excise law 
could be honestly enforced in New York if 
the public officials so desired. The rich 
brewers and liquor sellers, who had made 
money hand over fist by violating the excise 
law with the corrupt connivance of the 
police, raved with anger, and every corrupt 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 77 

politician and newspaper in the city gave 
them clamorous assistance; but the poor 
man, and notably the poor man's wife and 
children, benefited very greatly by what we 
did. The hospital surgeons found that their 
Monday labors were lessened by nearly one 
half, owing to the startling diminution in 
cases of injury due to drunken brawls; the 
work of the magistrates who sat in the city 
courts on Monday for the trial of the of- 
fenders of the preceding twenty-four hours 
was correspondingly decreased ; while many 
a tenement-house family spent Sunday in 
the country because for the first time the 
head of the family could not use up his 
money in getting drunk. The one all-im- 
portant element in good citizenship in our 
country is obedience to law, and nothing is 
more needed than the resolute enforcement 
of law. This we gave. 

There was no species of mendacity to 
which our opponents did not resort in the 
effort to break us down in our purpose. 
For weeks they eagerly repeated the tale 



78 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

that the saloons were as wide open as ever ; 
but they finally abandoned this when the 
counsel for the Liquor Dealers' Association 
admitted in open court, at the time when we 
secured the conviction of thirty of his clients 
and thereby brought the fight to an end, 
that over nine tenths of the liquor dealers 
had been rendered bankrupt because we had 
stopped that illegal trade which gave them 
the best portion of their revenue. They 
then took the line that by devoting our at- 
tention to enforcing the liquor law we per- 
mitted crime to increase. This, of course, 
offered a very congenial field for newspapers 
like the World, which exploited it to the 
utmost ; all the more readily since the mere 
reiteration of the falsehood tended to en- 
courage criminals, and so to make it not 
a falsehood. For a time the cry was not 
without influence, even with decent people, 
especially if they belonged to the class of 
the timid rich; but it simply wasn't true, 
and so this bubble went down stream with 
the others. For six or eight months the cry 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 79 

grew, first louder, then lower; and then it 
died away. A commentary upon its ac- 
curacy was furnished toward the end of 
our administration; for in February 1897, 
the Judge who addressed the grand jury of 
the month was able to congratulate them 
upon the fact that there was at that time 
less crime in New York relatively to the 
population than ever before; and this held 
true for our two years' service. 

In re-organizing the force the Board had 
to make, and did make, more promotions, 
more appointments, and more dismissals 
than had ever before been made in the same 
length of time. We were so hampered by 
the law that we were not able to dismiss 
many of the men whom we should have 
dismissed, but we did turn out 200 men — 
more than four times as many as had ever 
been turned out in the same length of time 
before ; all of them being dismissed after 
formal trial, and after having been given 
full opportunity to be heard in their own 
defence. We appointed about 1700 men all 



8o THE NEW YORK POLICE 

told — again more than four times as many 
as ever before ; for we were allowed a large 
increase of the police force by law. We 
made 130 promotions; more than had been 
made in the six preceding years. 

All this work was done in strictest ac- 
cord with what we have grown to speak of 
as the principles of civil service reform. In 
making dismissals we paid heed merely to 
the man's efficiency and past record, refus- 
ing to consider outside pressure; under the 
old regime no policeman with sufficient in- 
fluence behind him was ever dismissed, no 
matter what his offence. In making pro- 
motions we took into account not only the 
man's general record, his faithfulness, in- 
dustry and vigilance, but also his personal 
prowess as shown in any special feat of 
daring, whether in the arresting of criminals 
or in the saving of life — for the police serv- 
ice is military in character, and we wished 
to encourage the military virtues. In ma- 
king appointments we found that it was 
practicable to employ a system of rigid 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 8i 

competitive examinations, which, as finally 
perfected, combined a very severe physical 
examination with a mental examination 
such as could be passed by any man who 
had attended one of our public schools. Of 
course there was also a rigid investigation 
of character. Theorists have often sneered 
at civil service reform as " impracticable ; " 
and I am very far from asserting that 
written competitive examinations are al- 
ways applicable, or that they may not some- 
times be merely stop-gaps, used only be- 
cause they are better than the methods of 
appointing through political endorsement; 
but most certainly the system worked ad- 
mirably in the Police Department. We got 
the best lot of recruits for patrolmen that 
had ever been obtained in the history of 
the force, and we did just as well in our ex- 
aminations for matrons and police surgeons. 
The uplifting of the force was very notice- 
able, both physically and mentally. The 
best men we got were those who had served 
for three years or so in the Army or Navy. 



82 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

Next to these came the railroad men. One 
noticeable feature of the work was that we 
greatly raised the proportion of native-born, 
until, of the last hundred appointed, ninety- 
four per cent, were Americans by birth. 
Not once in a hundred times did we know 
the politics of the appointee, and we paid as 
little heed to this as to their religion. 

Another of our important tasks was see- 
ing that the elections were carried on hon- 
estly. Under the old Tammany rule the 
cheating was gross and flagrant, and the 
police were often deliberately used to facili- 
tate fraudulent practices at the polls. This 
came about in part from the very low 
character of the men put in as election of- 
ficers. By conducting a written examina- 
tion of the latter, and supplementing this by 
a careful inquiry into their character, in 
which we invited any decent outsiders to 
assist, we very distinctly raised their calibre. 
To show how necessary our examinations 
were, I may mention that before each elec- 
tion held under us we were obliged to re- 



THE NEW YORK POLICE §3 

ject, for moral or mental shortcomings, over 
a thousand of the men whom the regular 
party organizations, exercising their legal 
rights, proposed as election officers. We 
then merely had to make the police thor- 
oughly understand that their sole duty was 
to guarantee an honest election, and that 
they would be punished with the utmost 
rigor if they interfered with honest citizens 
on the one hand, or failed to prevent fraud 
and violence on the other. The result was 
that the elections of 1895 and 1896 were 
by far the most honest and orderly ever held 
in New York City. 

There were a number of other ways in 
which we sought to reform the police force, 
less important, and nevertheless very im- 
portant. We paid particular heed to putting 
a premium on specially meritorious conduct, 
by awarding certificates of honorable men- 
tion, and medals, where we were unable to 
promote. We introduced a system of pistol 
practice by which, for the first time, the 
policemen were brought to a reasonable 



84 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

standard of efficiency in handling their re- 
volvers. The Bertillion system for the iden- 
tification of criminals was introduced. A 
bicycle squad was organized with remark- 
able results, this squad speedily becoming 
a kind of corps d'elite, whose individual 
members distinguished themselves not only 
by their devotion to duty, but by repeated 
exhibitions of remarkable daring and skill. 
One important bit of reform was abolishing 
the tramp lodging-houses, which had origi- 
nally been started in the police stations, in 
a spirit of unwise philanthropy. These 
tramp lodging-houses, not being properly 
supervised, were mere nurseries for pauper- 
ism and crime, tramps and loafers of every 
shade thronging to the city every winter 
to enjoy their benefits. We abolished them, 
a municipal lodging-house being substi- 
tuted. Here all homeless wanderers were 
received, forced to bathe, given night- 
clothes before going to bed, and made to 
work next morning and in addition they 
were so closely supervised that habitual 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 85 

tramps and vagrants were speedily detected 
and apprehended. 

There was a striking increase in the 
honesty of the force, and there was a Hke 
increase in its efficiency. When we took 
office it is not too much to say that the great 
majority of the citizens of New York were 
firmly convinced that no police force could 
be both honest and efficient. They felt it to 
be part of the necessary order of things that 
a policeman should be corrupt, and they 
were convinced that the most efficient way 
of warring against certain forms of crime — 
notably crimes against person and property 
— was by enlisting the service of other 
criminals, and of purveyors of vice gen- 
erally, giving them immunity in return for 
their aid. Before we took power the ordi- 
nary purveyor of vice was allowed to ply 
his or her trade unmolested, partly in con- 
sideration of paying blackmail to the police, 
partly in consideration of giving informa- 
tion about any criminal who belonged to the 
unprotected classes. We at once broke up 



86 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

this whole business of blackmail and pro- 
tection, and made war upon all criminals 
alike, instead of getting the assistance of 
half in warring on the other half. Never- 
theless, so great was the improvement in 
the spirit of the force, that, although de- 
prived of their former vicious allies, they 
actually did better work than ever before 
against those criminals who threatened 
life and property. Relatively to the popu- 
lation, fewer crimes of violence occurred 
during our administration of the Board 
than in any previous two years of the 
city's history in recent times ; and the 
total number of arrests of criminals in- 
creased, while the number of cases in which 
no arrest followed the commission of 
crime decreased. The detective bureau 
nearly doubled the number of arrests made 
compared with the year before we took of- 
fice; obtaining, moreover, 365 convictions 
of felons and 215 convictions for misde- 
meanors, as against 269 and 105 respec- 
tively for the previous year. At the same 



THE NEW YORK POLICE 87 

time every attempt at riot or disorder was 
summarily checked, and all gangs of violent 
criminals brought into immediate subjec- 
tion; while on the other hand the immense 
mass meetings and political parades were 
handled with such care that not a single 
case of clubbing of any innocent citizen was 
reported. 

The result of our labors was of value to 
the city, for we gave the citizens better pro- 
tection than they had ever before received, 
and at the same time cut out the corruption 
which was eating away civic morality. We 
showed conclusively that it was possible to 
combine both honesty and efficiency in 
handling the police. We were attacked with 
the most bitter animosity by every sensa- 
tional newspaper and every politician of the 
baser sort, not because of our shortcomings, 
but because of what we did that was good. 
We enforced the laws as they were on the 
statute books, we broke up blackmail, we 
kept down the spirit of disorder, and re- 
pressed rascality, and we administered the 



88 THE NEW YORK POLICE 

force with an eye single to the welfare of 
the city. In doing this we encountered, as 
we had expected, the venomous opposition 
of all men whose interest it was that cor- 
ruption should continue, or who were of 
such dull morality that they were not will- 
ing to see honesty triumph at the cost of 
strife. 



Ill 

HOW NOT TO HELP OUR 
POORER BROTHERS 

AFTER the publication of my article in 
the September Review of Reviews 
on the vice-presidential candidates, I re- 
ceived the following very manly, and 
very courteous, letter from the Honorable 
Thomas Watson, then the candidate with 
Mr. Bryan on the Populist ticket for Vice- 
President. I publish it with his permis- 
sion: 

Hon. Theodore Roosevelt : 

It pains me to be misunderstood by those 
whose good opinion I respect, and upon 
reading your trenchant article in the Sep- 
tember number of the Review of Reviews 
the impulse was strong to write to you. 
* Review of Reviews, January, 1897. 
89 



90 OUR POORER BROTHER 

When you take your stand for honester 
government and for juster laws in New 
York, as you have so courageously done, 
your motives must be the same as mine — 
for you do not need the money your office 
gives you. I can understand, instinctively, 
what you feel — what your motives are. 
You merely obey a law of your nature 
which puts you into mortal combat with 
what you think is wrong. You fight be- 
cause your own sense of self-respect and 
self-loyalty compels you to fight. Is not 
this so? 

If in Georgia and throughout the South 
we have conditions as intolerable as those 
that surround you in New York, can you 
not realize w4iy I make war upon them? 

Tammany itself has grown great because 
mistaken leaders of the southern Democ- 
racy catered to its Kellys and Crokers and 
feared to defy them. 

The first " roast " I ever got from the 
Democratic press of this State followed a 
speech I had made denouncing Tammany, 



OUR POORER BROTHER 91 

and denouncing the craven leaders who 
obeyed Tammany. 

It is astonishing how one honest man 
may honestly misjudge another. 

My creed does not lead me to dislike the 
men who run a bank, a factory, a railroad 
or a foundry. I do not hate a man for 
owning a bond, and having a bank account, 
or having cash loaned at interest. 

Upon the other hand, I think each should 
make all the profit in business he fairly can ; 
but I do believe that the banks should not 
exercise the sovereign power of issuing 
money, and I do believe that all special 
privileges granted, and all exemption from 
taxation, work infinite harm. I do believe 
that the wealth of the Republic is practi- 
cally free from federal taxation, and that 
the burdens of government fall upon the 
shoulders of those least able to bear them. 

If you could spend an evening with me 
among my books and amid my family, I 
feel quite sure you would not again class 
me with those who make war upon the 



92 VUR POORER BROTHER 

" decencies and elegancies of civilized life. " 
And if you could attend one of my great po- 
litical meetings in Georgia, and see the good 
men and good women who believe in Popu- 
lism you would not continue to class them 
with those who vote for candidates upon 
the " no undershirt " platform. 

In other words, if you understood me and 
mine your judgment of us would be differ- 
ent. 

The " cracker " of the South is simply 
the man who did not buy slaves to do his 
work. He did it all himself — like a man. 
Some of our best generals in war, and mag- 
istrates in peace, have come from the 
" cracker " class. As a matter of fact, how- 
ever, my own people, from my father back 
to Revelutionary times, were slave owners 
and land owners. In the first meeting held 
in Georgia to express sympathy with the 
Boston patriots my great-great-grandfather 
bore a prominent part, and in the first State 
legislature ever convened in Georgia one of 



OUR POORER BROTHER 93 

my ancestors was the representative of his 
count}^ 

My grandfather was wealthy, and so was 
my father. My boyhood was spent in the 
idleness of a rich man's son. It was not 
until I was in my teens that misfortune 
overtook us, sent us homeless into the 
world, and deprived me of the thorough 
collegiate training my father intended for 
me. 

At sixteen years of age I thus had to com- 
mence life moneyless, and the weary years 
I spent among the poor, the kindness I re- 
ceived in their homes, and the acquaintance 
I made with the hardship of their lives, 
gave me that profound sympathy for them 
which I yet retain — though I am no longer 
poor myself. 

Pardon the liberty I take in intruding 
this letter upon you. I have followed your 
work in New York with admiring sympa- 
thy, and have frequently written of • it in 
my paper. While hundreds of miles sepa- 



94 OUR POORER BROTHER 

rate us, and our tasks and methods have 
been widely different, I must still believe 
that we have much in common, and that the 
ruling force which actuates us both is to 
challenge wrong and to fight the battles of 
good government. 

Very respectfully yours, 
(Signed) Thos. E. Watson. 

Thompson, Ga., August 30, 1896. 

I intended to draw a very sharp line be- 
tween Mr. Watson and many of those as- 
sociated with him in the same movement; 
and certain of the sentences which he 
quotes as if they were meant to apply to 
him were, on the contrary, meant to apply 
generally to the agitators who proclaimed 
both him and Mr. Bryan as their champi- 
ons, and especially to many of the men who 
were running on the Populist tickets in dif- 
ferent States. To Mr. Watson's own sin- 
cerity and courage I thought I had paid full 
tribute, and if I failed in any way I wish to 
make good that failure. I was in Washing- 



OUR POORER BROTHER 95 

ton when Mr. Watson was in Congress, and 
I know how highly he was esteemed per- 
sonally by his colleagues, even by those dif- 
fering very widely from him in matters of 
principle. The staunchest friends of order 
and decent government fully and cordially 
recognized Mr. Watson's honesty and good 
faith — men, for instance, like Senator 
Lodge of Massachusetts, and Representa- 
tive Bellamy Storer of Ohio. Moreover, I 
sympathize as little as Mr. Watson with de- 
nunciation of the '' cracker," and I may 
mention that one of my forefathers was the 
first Revolutionary Governor of Georgia at 
the time that Mr. Watson's ancestor sat in 
the first Revolutionary legislature of the 
State. Mr. Watson himself embodies not 
a few of the very attributes the lack of 
which we feel so keenly in many of our 
public men. He is brave^ he is earnest, he 
is honest, he is disinterested. For many of 
the wrongs which he wishes to remedy, I, 
too, believe that a remedy can be found, and 
for this purpose I would gladly strike hands 



96 OUR POORER BROTHER 

with him. All this makes it a matter of the 
keenest regret that he should advocate cer- 
tain remedies that we deem even worse than 
the wrongs complained of, and should strive 
in darkling ways to correct other wrongs, 
or rather inequalities and sufferings, which 
exist, not because of the shortcomings of 
society, but because of the existence of 
human nature itself. 

There are plenty of ugly things about 
wealth and its possessors in the present 
age, and I suppose there have been in all 
ages. There are many rich people who so 
utterly lack patriotism, or show such sor- 
did and selfish traits of character, or lead 
such mean and vacuous lives, that all right- 
minded men must look upon them with 
angry contempt; but, on the whole, the 
thrifty are apt to be better citizens than the 
thriftless; and the worst capitalist cannot 
harm laboring men as they are harmed by 
demagogues. As the people of a State grow 
more and more intelligent the State itself 
may be able to play a larger and larger 



OUR POORER BROTHER 97 

part in the life of the community, while 
at the same time individual effort may be 
given freer and less restricted movement 
along certain lines; but it is utterly unsafe 
to give the State more than the minimum 
of power just so long as it contains masses 
of men who can be moved by the pleas and 
denunciations of the average Socialist 
leader of to-day. There may be better 
schemes of taxation than those at present 
employed ; it may be wise to devise inherit- 
ance taxes, and to impose regulations on 
the kinds of business which can be carried 
on only under the especial protection of the 
State; and where there is a real abuse by 
wealth it needs to be, and in this country 
generally has been promptly done away 
with ; but the first lesson to teach the poor 
man is that, as a whole, the wealth in the 
community is distinctly beneficial to him; 
that he is better off in the long run because 
other men are well off ; and that the surest 
way to destroy what measure of prosperity 
he may have is to paralyze industry and the 



98 OUR POORER BROTHER 

well-being of those men who have achieved 
success. 

I am not an empiricist ; I would no more 
deny that sometimes human affairs can be 
much bettered by legislation than I would 
affirm that they can always be so bettered. 
I would no more make a fetish of unre- 
stricted individualism than I would admit 
the power of the State offhand and radi- 
cally to reconstruct society. It may become 
necessary to interfere even more than we 
have done with the right of private con- 
tract, and to shackle cunning as we have 
shackled force. All I insist upon is that 
we must be sure of our ground before try- 
ing to get any legislation at all, and that we 
must not expect too much from this legisla- 
tion, nor refuse to better ourselves a little 
because we cannot accomplish everything 
at a jump. Above all, it is criminal to ex- 
cite anger and discontent without propos- 
ing a remedy, or only proposing a false 
remedy. The worst foe of the poor 
man is the labor leader whether phi- 



OUR POORER BROTHER 99 

lanthropist or politician, who tries to teach 
him that he is a victim of conspiracy and 
injustice, when in reahty he is merely work- 
ing out his fate with blood and sweat as the 
immense majority of men who are worthy 
of the name always have done and always 
will have to do. 

The difference between what can and what 
cannot be done by law is well exemplified 
by our experience with the negro problem, 
an experience of which Mr. Watson must 
have ample practical knowledge. The ne- 
groes were formerly held in slavery. This 
was a wrong which legislation could rem- 
edy, and which could not be remedied 
except by legislation. Accordingly they 
were set free by law. This having been 
done, many of their friends believed that in 
some way, by additional legislation, we 
could at once put them on an intellectual, 
social, and business equality with the 
whites. The effort has failed completely. 
In large sections of the country the negroes 
are not treated as they should be treated. 



lOo OUR POORER BROTHER 

and politically in particular the frauds upon 
them have been so gross and shameful as to 
awaken not merely indignation but bitter 
wrath; yet the best friends of the negro 
admit that his hope lies, not in legislation, 
but in the constant working of those often 
unseen forces of the national life which are 
greater than all legislation. 

It is but rarely that great advances in 
general social well-being can be made by 
the adoption of some far-reaching scheme, 
legislative or otherwise; normally they 
come only by gradual growth, and by in- 
cessant effort to do first one thing, then 
another, and then another. Quack reme- 
dies of the universal cure-all type are gene- 
rally as noxious to the body politic as to 
the body corporal. 

Often the head-in-the-air social reform- 
ers, because people of sane and wholesome 
minds will not favor their wild schemes, 
themselves decline to favor schemes for 
practical reform. For the last two years 
there has been an honest effort in New 



OUR POORER BROTHER loi 

York to give the city good government, and 
to work intelligently for better social condi- 
tions, especially in the poorest quarters. 
We have cleaned the streets ; we have broken 
the power of the ward boss and the saloon- 
keeper to work injustice; we have des- 
troyed the most hideous of the tenement 
houses in which poor people are huddled 
like swine in a sty; we have made parks 
and play-grounds for the children in the 
crowded quarters; in every possible way 
we have striven to make life easier and 
healthier, and to give man and woman a 
chance to do their best work; while at the 
same time we have warred steadily against 
the pauper-producing, maudlin philan- 
thropy of the free-soup kitchen and tramp 
lodging-house kind. In all this we have 
had practically no help from either the par- 
lor socialists or the scarcely more noxious 
beer-room socialists who are always howl- 
ing about the selfishness of the rich and 
their unwillingness to do anything for those 
who are less well off. 



I02 OUR POORER BROTHER 

There are certain labor unions, certain 
bodies of organized labor — notably those 
admirable organizations which include the 
railway conductors, the locomotive engin- 
eers and the firemen — which to my mind 
embody almost the best hope that there is 
for healthy national growth in the future; 
but bitter experience has taught men who 
work for reform in New York that the 
average labor leader, the average dema- 
gogue who shouts for a depreciated cur- 
rency, or for the overthrow of the rich, will 
not do anything to help those who honestly 
strive to make better our civic conditions. 
There are immense numbers of working- 
men to whom we can appeal with perfect 
confidence; but too often we find that a 
large proportion of the men who style them- 
selves leaders of organized labor are influ- 
enced only by sullen short-sighted hatred 
of what they do not understand, and are 
deaf to all appeals, whether to their na- 
tional or to their civic patriotism. 

What I most grudge in all this is the 



OUR POORER BROTHER 103 

fact that sincere and zealous men of high 
character and honest purpose, men Hke Mr. 
Watson, men and women such as those he 
describes as attending his PopuHst meet- 
ings, or such as are to be found in all strata 
of our society, from the employer to the 
hardest-worked day laborer, go astray in 
their methods, and are thereby prevented 
from doing the full work for good 
they ought to. When a man goes on the 
wrong road himself he can do very little to 
guide others aright, even though these 
others are also on the wrong road. There 
are many wrongs to be righted; there are 
many measures of relief to be pushed ; and 
it is a pity that when they are fighting what 
is bad and championing what is good, the 
men who ought to be our most effective 
allies should deprive themselves of useful- 
ness by the wrong-headedness of their po- 
sition. Rich men and poor men both do 
wrong on occasions, and whenever a spe- 
cific instance of this can be pointed out all 
citizens alike should join in punishing the 



I04 OUR POORER BROTHER 

wrong-doer. Honesty and right-minded- 
ness should be the tests; not wealth or 
poverty. 

In our municipal administration here in 
New York we have acted with an equal 
hand toward wrong-doers of high and low 
degree. The Board of Health condemns 
the tenement-house property of the rich 
landowner, whether this landowner be priest 
or layman, banker or railroad president, 
lawyer or manager of a real estate busi- 
ness; and it pays no heed to the interces- 
sion of any politician, whether this poli- 
tician be Catholic or Protestant, Jew or 
Gentile. At the same time the Police De- 
partment promptly suppresses, not only the 
criminal, but the rioter. In other words, 
we do strict justice. We feel we are de- 
frauded of help to which we are entitled 
when men who ought to assist in any work 
to better the condition of the people decline 
to aid us because their brains are turned by 
dreams only worthy of a European revolu- 
tionist. 



OUR POORER BROTHER 105 

Many workingmen look with distrust 
upon laws which really would help them; 
laws for the intelligent restriction of immi- 
gration, for instance. I have no sympathy 
with mere dislike of immigrants; there are 
classes and even nationalities of them 
which stand at least on an equality with the 
citizens of native birth, as the last election 
showed. But in the interest of our work- 
ingmen we must in the end keep out labor- 
ers who are ignorant^ vicious, and with low 
standards of life and comfort, just as we 
have shut out the Chinese. 

Often labor leaders and the like denounce 
the present conditions of society, and espe- 
cially of our political life, for shortcomings 
which they themselves have been instru- 
mental in causing. In our cities the mis- 
government is due, not to the misdeeds of 
the rich, but to the low standard of honesty 
and morality among citizens generally ; and 
nothing helps the corrupt politician more 
than substituting either wealth or poverty 
for honesty as the standard by which to try 



io6 OUR POORER BROTHER 

a candidate. A few months ago a socialistic 
reformer in New York was denouncing the 
corruption caused by rich men because a 
certain judge was suspected of giving in- 
formation in advance as to a decision in a 
case involving the interests of a great cor- 
poration. Now this judge had been elected 
some years previously, mainly because he 
was supposed to be a representative of the 
*' poor man " ; and the socialistic reformer 
himself, a year ago, was opposing the elec- 
tion of Mr. Beaman as judge because he 
was one of the firm of Evarts & Choate, 
who were friends of various millionaires 
and were counsel for various corporations. 
But if Mr. Beaman had been elected judge 
no human being, rich or poor, would have 
dared so much as hint at his doing anything 
improper. 

Something can be done by good laws; 
more can be done by honest administration 
of the laws ; but most of all can be done by 
frowning resolutely upon the preachers of 
vague discontent ; and by upholding the true 



OUR POORER BROTHER 107 

doctrine of self-reliance, self-help, and self- 
mastery. This doctrine sets forth many 
things. Among them is the fact that though a 
man can occasionally be helped when he 
stumbles, yet that it is useless to try to carry 
him when he will not or cannot walk: 
and worse than useless to try to bring down 
the work and reward of the thrifty and in- 
telligent to the level of the capacity of the 
weak, the shiftless, and the idle. It further 
shows that the maudlin philanthropist and 
the maudlin sentimentalist are almost as 
noxious as the demagogue, and that it is 
even more necessary to temper mercy with 
justice than justice with mercy. 

The worst lesson that can be taught a 
man is to rely upon others and to whine 
over his sufferings. If an American is to 
amount to anything he must rely upon him- 
self, and not upon the State; he must take 
pride in his own work, instead of sitting 
idle to envy the luck of others; he must 
face life with resolute courage, win victory 
if he can, and accept defeat if he must, 



io8 OUR POORER BROTHER 

without seeking to place on his fellow- 
men a responsibility which is not theirs. 

Let me say in conclusion, that I do not 
write in the least from the standpoint of 
those whose assocation is purely with what 
are called the wealthy classes. The men 
with whom I have worked and associated 
most closely during the last couple of years 
here in New York, with whom I have 
shared what is at least an earnest desire to 
better social and civic conditions (neither 
blinking what is evil nor being misled by 
the apostles of a false remedy), and with 
those opinions as to what is right and prac- 
tical my own in the main agree, are not 
capitalists, save as all men who by toil earn, 
and with prudence save, money are capi- 
talists. They include reporters on the daily 
papers, editors of magazines, as well as of 
newspapers, principals in the public schools, 
young lawyers, young architects, young 
doctors, young men of business, who are 
struggling to rise in their profession by 
dint of faithful work, but who give some of 



OUR POORER BROTHER ^^9 

their lime to doing what they can for the 
city, and a number of priests and clergy- 
men ; but as it happens the hst does not in- 
clude any man of great wealth, or any of 
those men whose names are in the public 
mind identified with great business corpora- 
tions. Most of them have at one time or 
another in their lives faced poverty and 
know what it is; none of them are more 
than well-to-do. They include Catholics 
and Protestants, Jews, and men who would 
be regarded as heterodox by professors of 
most recognized creeds ; some of them were 
born on this side, others are of foreign 
birth ; but they are all Americans, heart and 
soul, who fight out for themselves the battles 
of their own lives, meeting sometimes defeat 
and sometimes victory. They neither for- 
get that man does owe a duty to his fel- 
lows, and should strive to do what he can 
to increase the well-being of the commu- 
nity ; nor yet do they forget that in the long 
run the only way to help people is to make 
them help themselves. They are prepared 



no OUR POORER BROTHER 

to try any properly guarded legislative 
remedy for ills which they believe can be 
remedied; but they perceive clearly that it 
is both foolish and wicked to teach the aver- 
age man who is not well off that some 
wrong or injustice has been done him, and 
that he should hope for redress elsewhere 
than in his own industry, honesty and in- 
telligence. 



IV 
THE MONROE DOCTRINE' 

THE Monroe Doctrine should not be 
considered from any purely academic 
standpoint, but as a broad, general principle 
of living policy. It is to be justified not by 
precedent merely, but by the needs of the 
nation and the true interests of Western 
civilization. It, of course, adds strength 
to our position at this moment to show that 
the action of the national authorities is 
w^arranted by the actions of their predeces- 
sors on like occasions in time past, and that 
the line of policy v^e are now pursuing is 
that which has been pursued by all our 
statesmen of note since the republic grew 
sufficiently powerful to make what it said of 
weight in foreign affairs. But even if in 
1 The Bachelor of Arts, March, 1896. 
Ill 



112 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

time past we had been as blind to the na- 
tional honor and welfare as are the men 
who at the present day champion the anti- 
American side of the Venezuelan question, 
it would now be necessary for statesmen 
who were both far-sighted and patriotic to 
enunciate the principles for which the Mon- 
roe Doctrine stands. In other words, if 
the Monroe Doctrine did not already exist 
it would be necessary forthwith to create 
it. 

Let us first of all clear the question at 
issue by brushing away one or two false 
objections. Lord Salisbury at first put in 
emphatic words his refusal in any way to 
recognize the Monroe Doctrine as part of 
the law of nations or as binding upon Great 
Britain. Most British statesmen and pub- 
licists followed his lead; but recently a 
goodly number have shown an inclination 
to acquiesce in the views of Lord Salis- 
bury's colleague, Mr. Chamberlain, who an- 
nounces, with bland indifference to the ex- 
pressed opinion of his nominal chief that 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 113 

England does recognize the existence of the 
Monroe Doctrine and never thought of ig- 
noring it. Lord Salisbury himself has re- 
cently shown symptoms of changing 
ground and taking this position; while Mr. 
Balfour has gone still farther in the right 
direction, and the Liberal leaders farther 
yet. It is not very important to us how far 
Lord Salisbury and Mr. Chamberlain may 
diverge in their views, although of course, 
in the interests of the English-speaking peo- 
ples and of peace between England and the 
United States, we trust that Mr. Chamber- 
lain's position will be sustained by Great 
Britain. But the attitude of our own peo- 
ple is important, and it would be amusing, 
were it not unpleasant, to see that many 
Americans, whose Americanism is of the 
timid and flabby type, have been inclined 
eagerly to agree with Lord Salisbury. A 
very able member of the New York bar re- 
marked the other day that he had not yet 
met the lawyer who agreed with Secretary 
Olney as to the legal interpretation of the 



114 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

Monroe Doctrine. This remark was chiefly 
interesting as showing the lawyer's own Hm- 
itations. It would not have been made if he 
had met the Justices of the Supreme Court, 
for instance; but even on the unfounded 
supposition that his remark was well 
grounded, it would have had little more 
significance than if he had said that he had 
not yet met a dentist who agreed with Mr. 
Olney. The Monroe Doctrine is not a 
question of law at all. It is a question of 
policy. It is a question to be considered not 
only by statesmen, but by all good citizens. 
Lawyers, as lawyers, have absolutely noth- 
ing whatever to say about it. To argue that 
it cannot be recognized as a principle of in- 
ternational law, is a mere waste of breath. 
Nobody cares whether it is or is not so rec- 
ognized, any more than any one cares 
whether the Declaration of Independence 
and Washington's farewell address are so 
recognized. 

The Monroe Doctrine may be briefly de- 
fined as forbidding European encroachment 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 115 

on American soil. It is not desirable to de- 
fine it so rigidly as to prevent our taking 
into account the varying degrees of national 
interest in varying cases. The United 
States has not the slightest wish to estab- 
lish a universal protectorate over other 
American States, or to become responsible 
for their misdeeds. If one of them becomes 
involved in an ordinary quarrel with a Eu- 
ropean power, such quarrel must be settled 
between them by any one of the usual meth- 
ods. But no European State is to be al- 
lowed to aggrandize itself on American 
soil at the expense of any American 
State. Furthermore, no transfer of an 
American colony from one European State 
to another is to be permitted, if, in the judg- 
ment of the United States, such transfer 
would be hostile to its own interests. 

John Quincy Adams, who, during the 
presidency of Monroe, first clearly enunci- 
ated the doctrine which bears his chief's 
name, asserted it as against both Spain and 
Russia. In the clearest and most emphatic 



Ii6 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

terms he stated that the United States could 
not acquiesce in the acquisition of new ter- 
ritory within the Hmits of any independent 
American State, whether in the Northern or 
Southern Hemisphere, by any European 
power. He took this position against Rus- 
sia when Russia threatened to take posses- 
sion of what is now Oregon. He took this 
position as against Spain when, backed by 
other powers of Continental Europe, she 
threatened to reconquer certain of the 
Spanish-American States. 

This is precisely and exactly the position 
the United States has now taken in refer- 
ence to England and Venezuela. It is idle to 
contend that there is any serious difference 
in the application of the doctrine to the two 
sets of questions. An American may, of 
course, announce his opposition to the Mon- 
roe Doctrine, although by so doing he for- 
feits all title to far-seeing and patriotic de- 
votion to the interests of his country. But 
he cannot argue that the Monroe Doctrine 
does not apply to the present case, unless 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE ii7 

he argues that the Monroe Doctrine has no 
existence whatsoever. In fact, such argu- 
ments are, on their face, so absurd that they 
need no refutation, and can be relegated 
where they belong — to the realm of the hair- 
splitting schoolmen. They have no con- 
cern either for practical politicians or for 
historians with true historic insight. 

We have asserted the principles which un- 
derlie the Monroe Doctrine, not only 
against Russia and Spain, but also against 
France, on at least two different occasions. 
The last and most important was when the 
French conquered Mexico and made it into 
an Empire. It is not necessary to recall to 
any one the action of our Government in 
the matter as soon as the Civil War came 
to an end. Suffice it to say that, under 
threat of our interposition, the French 
promptly abandoned Maximilian, and the 
latter's Empire fell. Long before this, how- 
ever, and a score of years before the Doc- 
trine was christened by the name Monroe 
even the timid statesmen of the Jeffersonian 



Ii8 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

era embodied its principle in their protest 
against the acquisition of Louisiana by 
France, from Spain. Spain at that time 
held all of what is now the Great West. 
France wished to acquire it. Our statesmen 
at once announced that they would regard 
as hostile to America the transfer of the 
territory in question from a weak to a 
strong European power. Under the Amer- 
ican pressure the matter was finally settled 
by the sale of the territory in question to 
the United States. The principle which our 
statesmen then announced was in kind pre- 
cisely the same as that upon which we 
should now act if Germany sought to ac- 
quire Cuba from Spain, or St. Thomas from 
the Danes. In either of these events it is 
hardly conceivable that the United States 
would hesitate to interfere, if necessary, by 
force of arms ; and in so doing the national 
authorities would undoubtedly be supported 
by the immense majority of the American 
people, and, indeed, by all save the men of 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 119 

abnormal timidity or abnormal political 
short-sightedness. 

Historically, therefore, the position of 
our representatives in the Venezuelan ques- 
tion is completely justified. It cannot be 
attacked on academic grounds. The pro- 
priety of their position is even more easily 
defensible. 

Primarily, our action is based on national 
self-interest. In other words, it is patriotic. 
A certain limited number of persons are 
fond of decrying patriotism as a selfish vir- 
tue, and strive with all their feeble might 
to inculcate in its place a kind of milk-and- 
water cosmopolitanism. These good people 
are never men of robust character or of im- 
posing personality, and the plea itself is 
not worth considering. Some reformers 
may urge that in the ages' distant future 
patriotism, like the habit of monogamous 
marriage, will become a needless and obso- 
lete virtue; but just at present the man who 
loves other countries as much as he does his 



I20 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

own is quite as noxious a member of so- 
ciety as the man who loves other women as 
much as he loves his wife. Love of coun- 
try is an elemental virtue, like love of home, 
or like honesty or courage. No country will 
accomplish very much for the world at large 
unless it elevates itself. The useful mem- 
ber of a community is the man who first and 
foremost attends to his own rights and his 
own duties, and who therefore becomes bet- 
ter fitted to do his share in the common du- 
ties of all. The useful member of the broth- 
erhood of nations is that nation which is 
most thoroughly saturated with the national 
idea, and which realizes most fully its rights 
as a nation and its duties to its own citizens. 
This is in no way incompatible with a scru- 
pulous regard for the rights of other na- 
tions, or a desire to remedy the wrongs of 
suffering peoples. 

The United States ought not to permit 
any great military powers, which have no 
foothold on this continent, to establish such 
foothold; nor should they permit any ag- 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 121 

grandizement of those who already have 
possessions on the continent. We do not 
wish to bring ourselves to a position where 
we shall have to emulate the European sys- 
tem of enormous armies. Every true pa- 
triot, every man of statesman-like habit, 
should look forward to the day when not a 
single European power will hold a foot of 
American soil. At present it is not neces- 
sary to take the position that no European 
power shall hold American territory; but it 
certainly will become necessary, if the timid 
and selfish " peace at any price " men have 
their way, and if the United States fails to 
check at the outset European aggrandize- 
ment on this continent. 

Primarily, therefore, it is to the interest 
of the citizens of the United States to pre- 
vent the further colonial growth of Eu- 
ropean powers in the Western Hemisphere. 
But this is also to the interest of all the 
people of the Western Hemisphere. At 
best, the inhabitants of a colony are in a 
cramped and unnatural state. At the worstj 



122 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

the establishment of a colony prevents any 
healthy popular growth. Some time in 
the dim future it may be that all the Eng- 
lish-speaking peoples will be able to unite 
in some kind of confederacy. However de- 
sirable this would be, it is, under existing 
conditions, only a dream. At present the 
only hope for a colony that wishes to attain 
full moral and mental growth, is to become 
an independent State, or part of an inde- 
pendent State. No English colony now 
stands on a footing of genuine equality 
with the parent State. As long as the Ca- 
nadian remains a colonist, he remains in 
a position which is distinctly inferior to 
that of his cousins, both in England and in 
the United States. The Englishman at bot- 
tom looks down on the Canadian, as he 
does on any one who admits his inferiority, 
and quite properly, too. The American, on 
the other hand, with equal propriety, re- 
gards the Canadian with the good-natured 
condescension always felt by the free- 
man for the man who is not free. A funny 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 123 

instance of the English attitude toward 
Canada was shown after Lord Dunraven's 
inglorious fiasco last September, when the 
Canadian yatchsman, Rose, challenged for 
the American cup. The English journals 
repudiated him on the express ground that 
a Canadian was not an Englishman and not 
entitled to the privileges of an Englishman. 
In their comments, many of them showed 
a dislike for Americans which almost rose 
to hatred. The feeling they displayed for 
the Canadians was not one of dislike. It 
was one of contempt. 

Under the best of circumstances, there- 
fore, a colony is in a false position. But if 
the colony is in a region where the coloniz- 
ing race has to do its work by means of 
other inferior races the condition is much 
worse. From the standpoint of the race lit- 
tle or nothing has been gained by the Eng- 
lish conquest and colonization of Jamaica. 
Jamaica has merely been turned into a ne- 
gro island, with a future, seemingly, much 
like that of San Domingo. British Guiana, 



124 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

however well administered, is nothing but a 
colony where a few hundred or few thou- 
sand white men hold the superior positions, 
while the bulk of the population is com- 
posed of Indians, Negroes, and Asiatics. 
Looked at through the yista of the centu- 
ries, such a colony contains less promise of 
true growth than does a State like Vene- 
zuela or Ecuador. The history of most of 
the South American republics has been both 
mean and bloody; but there is at least a 
chance that they may develop, after infinite 
tribulations and suffering, into a civilization 
quite as high and stable as that of such a 
European power as Portugal. But there is 
no such chance for any tropical American 
colony owned by a Northern European race. 
It is distinctly in the interest of civilization 
that the present States in the two Americas 
should develop along their own lines, and 
however desirable it is that many of them 
should receive European immigration, it is 
highly undesirable that any of them should 
be under European control. 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 125 

So much for the general principles, and 
the justification, historically and morally, of 
the Monroe Doctrine. Now take the spe- 
cific case at issue. Great Britain has a 
boundary dispute with Venezuela. She 
claims as her own a territory which Vene- 
zuela asserts to be hers, a territory which 
in point of size very nearly equals the King- 
dom of Italy. Our government, of course, 
cannot, if it wishes to remain true to the 
traditions of the Monroe Doctrine submit 
to the acquisition by England of such an 
enormous tract of territory, and it must 
therefore find out whether the English 
claims are or are not well founded. It 
would, of course, be preposterous to lay 
down the rule that no European power 
should seize American territory which 
was not its own, and yet to permit the 
power itself to decide the question of the 
ownership of such territory. Great Britain 
refused to settle the question either by ami- 
cable agreement with Venezuela or by arbi- 
tration. All that remained for the United 



126 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

States, was to do what it actually did ; that 
is, to try and find out the facts for itself, 
by its own commission. If the facts show 
England to be in the right, well and good. 
If they show England to be in the wrong, 
we most certainly ought not to permit her 
to profit, at Venezuela's expense, by her 
own wrong-doing. 

We are doing exactly what England 
would very properly do in a like case. Re- 
cently, when the German Emperor started 
to interfere in the Transvaal, England 
promptly declared her own " Monroe Doc- 
trine " for South Africa. We do not propose 
to see English filibusters try at the expense 
of Venezuela the same policy which recently 
came to such an ignominious end in the 
Transvaal, in a piece of weak, would-be 
buccaneering, which, it is perhaps not unfair 
to say was fittingly commemorated in the 
verse of the new poet-laureate. 

It would be difficult to overestimate the 
good done in this country by the vigorous 
course already taken by the national execu- 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 127 

tive and legislature in this matter. The les- 
son taught Lord Salisbury is one which will 
not soon be forgotten by English statesmen. 
His position is false, and is recognized as 
false by the best English statesmen and 
publicists. If he does not consent to ar- 
range the matter with Venezuela, it will 
have to be arranged in some way by arbi- 
tration. In either case, the United States 
gains its point. The only possible danger 
of war comes from the action of the selfish 
and timid men on this side of the water, who 
clamorously strive to misrepresent Amer- 
ican, and to mislead English, public opinion. 
If they succeed in persuading Lord Salis- 
bury that the American people will back 
down if he presses them, they will do the 
greatest damage possible to both countries, 
for they will render war, at some time in the 
future, almost inevitable. 

Such a war we would deplore; but it 
must be distinctly understood that we 
would deplore it very much more for Eng- 
land's sake than for our own ; for whatever 



128 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

might be the initial fortunes of the struggle, 
or the temporary damage and loss to the 
United States, the mere fact that Canada 
would inevitably be rent from England in 
the end would make the outcome an Eng- 
lish disaster. 

We do not in any way seek to become 
the sponsor of the South American States. 
England has the same right to protect her 
own subjects, or even in exceptional cases 
to interfere to stop outrages in South Amer- 
ica, that we have to interfere in Armenia — 
and it is to be regretted that our representa- 
tives do not see their way clear to interfere 
for Armenia. But England should not ac- 
quire territory at the expense of Venezuela 
any more than we should acquire it at the 
expense of Turkey. 

The mention of Armenia brings up a 
peculiarly hypocritical plea which has been 
advanced against us in this controversy. It 
has been solemnly alleged that our action 
in Venezuela has hampered England in the 
East and has prevented her interfering on 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 129 

behalf of Armenia. We do not wish to in- 
dulge in recriminations, but when such a 
plea is advanced, the truth, however un- 
pleasant, must be told. The great crime of 
this century against civilization has been the 
upholding of the Turk by certain Christian 
powers. To England's attitude in the Cri- 
mean War, and after the Russo-Turkish 
War of 1877, the present Armenian horror 
is primarily due. Moreover, for six months 
before the Venezuelan question arose Eng- 
land had looked on motionless while the 
Turks perpetrated on their wretched sub- 
jects wrongs that would blast the memory 
of Attila. 

We do not wish to be misunderstood. We 
have no feeling against England. On the 
contrary, we regard her as being well in 
advance of the great powers of Continental 
Europe, and we have more sympathy with 
her. In general, her success tells for the 
success of civilization, and we wish her well. 
But where her interests enlist her against 
the progress of civilization and in favor of 



I30 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

the oppression of other nationahties who 
are struggHng upward, our sympathies are 
immediately forfeited. 

It is a matter of serious concern to every 
college man, and, indeed, to every man who 
believes in the good effects of a liberal edu- 
cation, to see the false views which seem to 
obtain among so many of the leaders of edu- 
cated thought, not only upon the Monroe 
Doctrine, but upon every question which 
involves the existence of a feeling of robust 
Americanism. Every educated man who 
puts himself out of touch with the current 
of American thought, and who on conspicu- 
ous occasions assumes an attitude hostile 
to the interest of America, is doing what he 
can to weaken the influence of educated 
men in American life. The crude, ill-con- 
ditioned jealousy of education, which is so 
often and so lamentably shown by large 
bodies of our people, is immensely stimu- 
lated by the action of those prominent edu- 
cated men in whom education seems to have 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 131 

destroyed the strong, virile virtues and es- 
pecially the spirit of Americanism. 

No nation can achieve real greatness if 
its people are not both essentially moral and 
essentially manly; both sets of qualities are 
necessary. It is an admirable thing to pos- 
sess refinement and cultivation, but the 
price is too dear if they must be paid for 
at the cost of the rugged fighting qualities 
which make a man able to do a man's work 
in the world, and which make his heart beat 
with that kind of love of country which is 
shown not only in readiness to try to make 
her civic life better, but also to stand up 
manfully for her when her honor and 
influence are at stake in a dispute with a 
foreign power. A heavy responsibility 
rests on the educated man. It is a double 
discredit to him to go wrong, whether his 
shortcomings take the form of shirking his 
every-day civic duties, or of abandonment 
of the nation's rights in a foreign quarrel. 
He must no more be misled by the sneers of 



I3« THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

those who always write " patriotism " be- 
tween inverted commas than by the coarser, 
but equally dangerous, ridicule of the poli- 
ticians who jeer at '* reform." It is as un- 
manly to be taunted by one set of critics 
into cowardice as it is to be taunted by the 
other set into dishonesty. 

There are many upright and honorable 
men who take the wrong side, that is, the 
anti- American side, of the Monroe Doctrine 
because they are too short-sighted or too un- 
imaginative to realize the hurt to the nation 
that would be caused by the adoption of 
their vews. There are other men who take 
the wrong view simply because they have 
not thought much of the matter, or are 
in unfortunate surroundings, by which they 
have been influenced to their own moral 
hurt. There are yet other men in whom the 
mainspring of the opposition to that branch 
of American policy known as the Monroe 
Doctrine is sheer timidity. This is some- 
times the ordinary timidity of wealth. 
Sometimes, however, it is peculiarly devel- 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE i33 

oped among educated men whose education 
has tended to make them over-cultivated 
and over-sensitive to foreign opinion. 
They are generally men who undervalue the 
great fighting qualities, without which no 
nation can ever rise to the first rank. 

The timidity of wealth is proverbial, and 
it was well illustrated by the attitude taken 
by too many people of means at the time of 
the Venezuela trouble. Many of them, in- 
cluding bankers, merchants and railway 
magnates, criticised the action of the Presi- 
dent and the Senate, on the ground that it 
had caused business disturbance. Such a 
position is essentially ignoble. When a 
question of national honor or of national 
right or wrong, is at stake, no question of 
financial interest should be .considered for 
a moment. Those wealthy men who wish 
the abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine 
because its assertion may damage their busi- 
ness, brings discredit to themselves, and, so 
far as they are able, discredit to the nation 
of which they are a part. 



134 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

It is an evil thing for any man of educa- 
tion to forget that education should in- 
tensify patriotism, and that patriotism 
must not only be shown by striving to do 
good to the country from within, but by 
readiness to uphold its interests and honor, 
at any cost, when menaced from without. 
Educated men owe to the community the 
serious performance of this duty. We need 
not concern ourselves with the emigre edu- 
cated man, the American who deliberately 
takes up his permanent abode abroad, 
whether in London or Paris; he is usually 
a man of weak character, unfitted to do 
good work either abroad or at home, who 
does what he can for his country by reliev- 
ing it of his presence. But the case is other- 
wise with the American who stays at home, 
and tries to teach the youth of his country 
to disbelieve in the country's rights, as 
against other countries, and to regard it as 
the sign of an enlightened spirit to decry 
the assertion of those rights by force of 
arms. This man may be inefficient for 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE nS 

gcod; but he is capable at times of doing 
harm, because he tends to make other peo- 
ple inefficient likewise. In our municipal 
politics there has long been evident a ten- 
dency to gather in one group the people 
who have no scruples, but who are very effi- 
cient, and in another group the amiable 
people who are not efficient at all. This is 
but one manifestation of the general and 
very unwholesome tendency among certain 
educated people to lose the power of doing 
efficient work as they acquire refinement. 
Of course in the long run a really good edu- 
cation will give not only refinement, but also 
an increase of power, and of capacity for 
efficient work. But the man who forgets 
that a real education must include the culti- 
vation of the fighting virtues is sure to 
manifest this tendency to inefficiency. It is 
exhibited on a national scale by the edu- 
cated men who take the anti- American side 
of international questions. There are ex- 
ceptions to the rule; but as a rule the 
healthy man, resolute to do the rough work 



13^ THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

of the world, and capable of feeling his 
veins tingle with pride over the great deeds 
of the men of his own nation, will naturally 
take the American side of such a question 
as the Monroe Doctrine. Similarly, the 
anaemic man of refinement and cultivation, 
whose intellect has been educated at the 
expense of his character^ and who shrinks 
from all these struggles through which 
alone the world moves on to greatness, is 
inclined to consider any expression of the 
Monroe Doctrine as truculent and ill ad- 
vised. 

Of course, many strong men who are 
good citizens on ordinary occasions take 
the latter view simply because they have 
been misled. The colonial habit of thought 
dies hard. It is to be wished that those 
who are cursed with it would, in endeavor- 
ing to emulate the ways of the old world, 
endeavor to emulate one characteristic 
which has been shared by every old-world 
nation, and which is possessed to a marked 
degree by England. Every decent English- 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE I37 

man is devoted to his country, first, last, 
and all the time. An Englishman may or 
may not dislike America, but he is invari- 
ably for Engand and against America 
when any question arises between them; 
and I heartily respect him for so being. 
Let our own people of the partially colonial 
type copy this pecuharity and it will be much 
to their credit. 

The finest speech that for many years has 
been delivered by a college man to other 
college men was that made last spring by 
Judge Holmes, himself a gallant soldier of 
the Civil War, in that hall which Harvard 
has erected to commemorate those of her 
sons who perished when the North strove 
with the South. It should be graven on the 
heart of every college man, for it has in it 
that lift of the soul toward things heroic 
that makes the eyes burn and the veins 
thrill. It must be read in its entirety, for no 
quotation could do justice to its fine scorn 
of the mere money-maker, its lofty fealty 
to a noble ideal, and, above all, its splendid 



138 THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

love of country and splendid praise of the 
valor of those who strive on stricken fields 
that the honor of their nation may be up- 
held. 

It is strange, indeed, that in a country 
where words like those of Judge Holmes 
can be spoken, there should exist men who 
actually oppose the building of a navy by 
the United States, nay, even more, actually 
oppose so much as the strengthening of the 
coast defences, on the ground that they pre- 
fer to have this country too feeble to resent 
any insult, in order that it may owe its 
safety to the contemptuous forbearance 
which it is hoped this feebleness will inspire 
in foreign powers. No Tammany alderman, 
no venal legislator, no demagogue or cor- 
rupt politician, ever strove more effectively 
than these men are striving to degrade the 
nation and to make one ashamed of the 
name of America. When we remember 
that among them there are college gradu- 
ates, it is a relief to remember that the 
leaders on the side of manliness and of 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE i39 

love of country, are also college graduates. 
Every believer in scholarship and in a lib- 
eral education, every believer in the robust 
qualities of heart, mind, and body without 
which cultivation and refinement are of no 
avail, must rejoice to think that, in the 
present crisis, college men have been promi- 
nent among the leaders whose far-sighted 
statemanship and resolute love of country 
have made those of us who are really 
Americans proud of the nation. Secretary 
Olney is a graduate of Brown ; Senator 
Lodge, who took the lead in the Senate on 
this matter, is a graduate of Harvard; and 
no less than three members of the Bound- 
ary Comission are graduates of Yale. 



V 

WASHINGTON'S FORGOT- 
TEN MAXIM' 

A CENTURY has passed since Wash- 
ington wrote ''To be prepared for 
war is the most effectual means to promote 
peace.'' We pay to this maxim the hp loy- 
alty we so often pay to Washington's 
words ; but it has never sunk deep into our 
hearts. Indeed of late years many persons 
have refused it even the poor tribute of lip 
loyalty, and prate about the iniquity of war 
as if somehow that was a justification for 
refusing to take the steps which can alone 
in the long run prevent war or avert the 
dreadful disasters it brings in its train. The 
truth of the maxim is so obvious to every 
man of really far-sighted patriotism that its 

^ Address as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 
before the Naval War College, June, 1897. 
140 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 141 

mere statement seems trite and useless, and 
it is not over-creditable to either our intelli- 
gence or our love of country that there 
should be, as there is, need to dwell upon 
and amplify such a truism. 

In this country there is not the slightest 
/ danger of an over-development of warlike 
spirit, and there never has been any such 
danger. In all our history there has never 
been a time when preparedness for war was 
any menace to peace. On the contrary, 
again and again we have owed peace to the 
fact that we were prepared for war; and 
in the only contest which we have had with 
a European power since the Revolution, the 
war of 1 8 12, the struggle and all its attend- 
ant disasters, were due solely to the fact 
that we were not prepared to face, and were 
not ready instantly to resent, an attack upon 
our honor and interest; while the glorious 
triumphs at sea which redeemed that war 
were due to the few preparations which we 
had actually made. We are a great peaceful 
nation; a nation of merchants and manu- 



142 A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

facturers, of farmers and mechanics; a na- 
tion of workingmen, who labor incessantly 
with head or hand. It is idle to talk of 
such a nation ever being led into a course 
of wanton aggression or conflict with mili- 
tary powers by the possession of a sufficient 
navy. 

The danger is of precisely the opposite 
character. If we forget that in the last re- 
sort we can only secure peace by being 
ready and willing to fight for it, we may 
some day have bitter cause to realize 
that a rich nation which is slothful, timid, 
or unwieldy is an easy prey for any people 
which still retains those most valuable of 
all qualities, the soldierly virtues. We but 
keep to the traditions of Washington, to the 
traditions of all the great Americans who 
struggled for the real greatness of America, 
when we strive to build up those fighting 
qualities for the lack of which in a nation, 
as in an individual, no refinement, no cul- 
ture, no wealth, no material prosperity, can 
atone. 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 143 

Preparation for war is the surest guar- 
anty for peace. Arbitration is an excellent 
thing, but ultimately those who wish to see 
this country at peace with foreign nations 
will be wise if they place reliance upon a 
first-class fleet of first-class battle-ships 
rather than on any arbitration treaty which 
the wit of man can devise. Nelson said 
that the British fleet was the best negotiator 
in Europe, and there was much truth in the 
saying. Moreover, while we are sincere 
and earnest in our advocacy of peace, we 
must not forget that an ignoble peace is 
worse than any war. We should engrave 
in our legislative halls those splendid lines 
of Lowell : 

" Come, Peace ! not like a mourner bowed 
For honor lost and dear ones wasted, 
But proud, to meet a people proud, 
With eyes that tell of triumph tasted ! " 

Peace is a goddess only when she comes 
Vv^ith sword girt on thigh. The ship of state 
can be steered safely only when it is always 
possible to bring her against any foe with 



144 A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

" her leashed thunders gathering for the 
leap." A really great people, proud and 
high-spirited, would face all the disasters 
of war rather than purchase that base pros- 
perity which is bought at the price of na- 
tional honor. All the great masterful races 
have been fighting races, and the minute 
that a race loses the hard fighting virtues, 
then, no matter what else it may retain, no 
matter how skilled in commerce and finance, 
in science or art, it has lost its proud right 
to stand as the equal of the best. Cowardice 
in a race, as in an individual, is th^ unpar- 
donable sin, and a wilful failure to prepare 
for danger may in its effects be as bad as 
cowardice. The timid man who cannot fight, 
and the selfish, short-sighted, or foolish 
man who will not take the steps that will 
enable him to fight, stand on almost the 
same plane. 
/ It is not only true that a peace may be 
so ignoble and degrading as to be worse 
than any war; it is also true that it may be 
fraught with more bloodshed than most 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM i45 

wars. Of this there was been melancholy 
proof during the last two years. Thanks 
largely to the very unhealthy influence of 
the men whose business it is to speculate in 
the money market, and who approach every 
subject from the financial standpoint, 
purely; and thanks quite as much to the 
cold-blooded brutality and calculating 
timidity of many European rulers and 
statesmen, the peace of Europe has been 
preserved, while the Turk has been allowed 
to butcher the Armenians with hideous and 
unmentionable barbarity, and has actually 
been helped to keep Crete in slavery. War 
has been averted at the cost of more blood- 
shed and infinitely more suffering and deg- 
radation to wretched women and children 
than have occurred in any European strug- 
gle since the days of Waterloo. No war of 
recent years, no matter how wanton, has 
been so productive of horrible misery as the 
peace which the powers have maintained 
during the continuance of the Armenian 
butcheries. The men who would preach 



146 A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

this peace, and indeed the men who have 
preached universal peace in terms that have 
prepared the way for such peace as this, 
have inflicted a wrong on humanity greater 
than could be inflicted by the most reckless 
and war-loving despot. Better a thousand 
times err on the side of over-readiness to 
fight, than to err on the side of tame sub- 
mission to injury, or cold-blooded indiffer- 
ence to the misery of the oppressed. 

Popular sentiment is just when it selects 
as popular heroes the men who have led in 
the struggle against malice domestic or for- 
eign levy. No triumph of peace is quite so 
great as the supreme triumphs of war. The 
courage of the soldier, the courage of the 
statesman who has to meet storms which 
can be quelled only by soldierly qualities — 
this stands higher than any quality called 
out merely in time of peace. It is by no 
means necessary that we should have war 
to develop soldierly attributes and soldierly 
qualities; but if the peace we enjoy is of 
such a kind that it causes their loss, then it 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM i47 

is far too dearly purchased, no matter what 
may be its attendant benefits. It may be 
that some time in the dim future of the race 
the need for war will vanish ; but that time 
is yet ages distant. As yet no nation can 
hold its place in the world, or can do any 
work really worth doing, unless it stands 
ready to guard its rights with an armed 
hand. That orderly liberty which is both 
the foundation and the capstone of our 
civilization can be gained and kept only 
by men who are willing to fight for an ideal ; 
who hold high the love of honor, love of 
faith, love of flag, and love of country. It 
is true that no nation can be really great 
unless it is great in peace ; in industry, in- 
tegrity, honesty. Skilled intelligence in 
civic affairs and industrial enterprises alike ; 
the special ability of the artist, the man of 
letters, the man of science, and the man of 
business ; the rigid determination to wrong 
no man, and to stand for righteousness — all 
these are necessary in a great nation. But 
it is also necessary that the nation should 



148 A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

have physical no less than moral courage; 
the capacity to do and dare and die at need, 
and that grim and steadfast resolution 
which alone will carry a great people 
through a great peril. The occasion may 
come at any instant when 

** 'T is man's perdition to be safe 
When for the truth he ought to die." 

All great nations have shown these qual- 
ities. The Dutch held but a little corner of 
Europe. Their industry, thrift, and enter- 
prise in the pursuits of peace and their cul- 
tivation of the arts helped to render them 
great; but these qualities would have been 
barren had they not been backed by those 
sterner qualities which rendered them able 
to wrest their freedom from the cruel 
strength of Spain, and to guard it against 
the banded might of England and of 
France. The merchants and the artists of 
Holland did much for her; but even more 
was done by the famished burghers who 
fought to the death on the walls of Harlem 
and Leyden, and the great admirals who 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM I49 

led their fleets to victory on the broad and 
narrow seas. 

England's history is rich in splendid 
names and splendid deeds. Her literature 
is even greater than that of Greece. In 
commerce she has stood in the modern 
world as more than ever Carthage was 
when civilization clustered in a fringe 
around the Mediterranean. But she has 
risen far higher than ever Greece or Car- 
thage rose, because she possesses also the 
great, masterful qualities which were pos- 
sessed by the Romans who overthrew them 
both. England has been fertile in soldiers 
and administrators ; in men who triumphed 
by sea and by land ; in adventurers and ex- 
plorers who won for her the world's waste 
spaces; and it is because of this that the 
English-speaking race now shares with the 
Slav the fate of the coming years. 

We of the United States have passed 
most of our few years of national life in 
peace. We honor the architects of our 
wonderful material prosperity ; we appreci- 



ISO A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

ate the necessity of thrift, energy, and busi- 
ness enterprise, and we know that even 
these are of no avail without the civic and 
social virtues. But we feel, after all, that 
the men who have dared greatly in war, or 
the work which is akin to war, are those 
who deserve best of the country. The men 
of Bunker Hill and Trenton, Saratoga and 
Yorktown, the men of New Orleans and 
Mobile Bay, Gettysburg and Appomattox 
are those to whom we owe most. None of 
our heroes of peace, save a few great con- 
structive statesmen, can rank with our he- 
roes of war. The Americans who stand 
highest on the list of the world's worthies 
are Washington, who fought to found the 
country which he afterward governed, and 
Lincoln, who saved it through the blood of 
the best and bravest in the land ; Washing- 
ton, the soldier and statesman, the man of 
cool head, dauntless heart, and iron will, 
the greatest of good men and the best of 
great men ; and Lincoln, sad, patient, kindly 
Lincoln, who for four years toiled and suf- 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 151 

fered for th.e people, and when his work 
was done laid down his life that the flag 
which had been rent in sunder might once 
more be made whole and without a seam. 
It is on men such as these, and not on 
the advocates of peace at any price, or upon 
those so shortsighted that they refuse to 
take into account the possibility of war, that 
we must rely in every crisis which deeply 
touches the true greatness and true honor 
of the Republic. The United States has 
never once in the course of its history suf- 
fered harm because of preparation for war, 
or because of entering into war. But we 
have suffered incalculable harm, again and 
again, from a foolish failure to prepare for 
war or from reluctance to fight when to 
fight was proper. The men who to-day pro- 
test against a navy, and protest also against 
every movement to carry out the traditional 
policy of the country in foreign affairs, and 
to uphold the honor of the flag, are them- 
selves but following in the course of those 
who protested against the acquisition of the 



152 A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

great West, and who failed to make proper 
preparations for the war of 1812, or refused 
to support it after it had been made. They 
are own brothers to the men whose short- 
sightedness and supine indifference pre- 
vented any reorganization of the personnel 
of the Navy during the middle of the cen- 
tury, so that we entered upon the Civil War 
with captains seventy years old. They are 
close kin to the men who, when the South- 
ern States secededj wished to let the Union 
be disrupted in peace rather than restored 
through the grim agony of armed conflict. 

I do not believe that any considerable 
number of our citizens are stamped with 
this timid lack of patriotism. There are 
some doctrinaires whose eyes are so firmly 
fixed on the golden vision of universal 
peace that they cannot see the grim facts of 
real life until they stumble over them, to 
their own hurt, and, what is much worse, 
to the possible undoing of their fellows. 
There are some educated men in whom 
education merely serves to soften the fibre 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 153 

and to eliminate the higher, sterner quaHties 
which tell for national greatness ; and these 
men prate about love for mankind, or for 
another country, as being in some hidden 
way a substitute for love of their own coun- 
try. What is of more weight, there are not 
a few men of means who have made the till 
their fatherland, and who are always ready 
to balance a temporary interruption of 
money-making, or a temporary financial and 
commercial disaster, against the self-sacri- 
fice necessary in upholding the honor of the 
nation and the glory of the flag. 

But after all these people, though often 
noisy, form but a small minority of the 
whole. They would be swept like chaff be- 
fore the gust of popular fury which would 
surely come if ever the nation really saw 
and felt a danger or an insult. The real 
trouble is that in such a case this gust of 
popular fury would come too late. Unreadi- 
ness for war is merely rendered more dis- 
astrous by readiness to bluster ; to talk defi- 
ance and advocate a vigorous policy in 



154 A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

words, while refusing to back up these 
words by deeds, is cause for humiUation. 
It has always been true, and in this age it is 
more than ever true, that it is too late to 
prepare for war when the time for peace has 
passed. The short-sightedness of many 
people, the good-humored indifference to 
facts of others, the sheer ignorance of a vast 
number, and the selfish reluctance to in- 
sure against future danger by present sacri- 
fice among yet others — these are the chief 
obstacles to building up a proper navy and 
carrying out a proper foreign policy. 

The men who opposed the war of 1812, 
and preferred to have the nation humiliated 
by unresented insult from a foreign power 
rather than see her suffer the losses of an 
honorable conflict, occupied a position little 
short of contemptible ; but it was not much 
worse than that of the men who brought on 
the war and yet deliberately refused to 
make the preparations necessary to carry it 
to a successful conclusion. The visionary 
schemes for defending the country by gun- 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM i55 

boats, instead of by a fleet of seagoing bat- 
tle-ships; the refusal to increase the Navy 
to a proper size ; the determination to place 
reliance upon militia instead of upon regu- 
larly trained troops; and the disasters 
which followed upon each and every one of 
these determinations should be studied in 
every schoolbook in the land so as to en- 
force in the minds of all our citizens the 
truth of Washington's adage, that in time 
of peace it is necessary to prepare for war. 
All this applied in 1812; but it applies 
with tenfold greater force now. Then, as 
now, it was the Navy upon which the coun- 
try had to depend in the event of war with 
a foreign power; and then, as now, one of 
the chief tasks of a wise and far-seeing 
statesmanship should have been the up- 
building of a formidable fighting navy. In 
1812 untold evils followed from the failure 
to provide such a fighting navy; for the 
splendid feats of our few cruisers merely 
showed what could have been done if we 
had had a great fleet of battle-ships. But 



156 A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

ships, guns, and men were much more 
easily provided in time of emergency at the 
beginning of this century than at the end. 
It takes months to build guns and ships 
now, where it then took days, or at the most, 
weeks ; and it takes far longer now to train 
men to the management of the vast and 
complicated engines with which war is 
waged. Therefore preparation is much 
more difficult, and requires a much longer 
time; and yet wars are so much quicker, 
they last so comparatively short a period, 
and can be begun so instantaneously that 
there is very much less time than formerly 
in which to make preparations. 

No battle-ship can be built inside of two 
years under no matter what stress of cir- 
cumstances, for we have not in this country 
the plant to enable us to work faster. 
Cruisers would take almost as long. Even 
torpedo boats, the smallest of all, could not 
be put in first-class form under ninety days. 
Guns available for use against a hostile in- 
vader would require two or three months; 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM I57 

and in the case of the larger guns, the only 
ones really available for the actual shock of 
battle, could not be made under eight 
months. Rifles and military munitions of 
every kind would require a corresponding 
length of time for preparation; in most 
cases we should have to build, not merely 
the weapons we need, but the plant with 
which to make them in any large quantity. 
Even if the enemy did not interfere with 
our efforts, which they undoubtedly would, 
it would, therefore, take from three to six 
months after the outbreak of a war, for 
which we were unprepared, before we 
could in the slightest degree remedy our 
unreadiness. During this six months it 
would be impossible to overestimate the 
damage that could be done by a resolute 
and powerful antagonist. Even at the end 
of that time we would only be beginning to 
prepare to parry his attack, for it would be 
two years before we could attempt to re- 
turn it. Since the change in military con- 
ditions in modern times there has never 



158 A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

been an instance in which a war between 
any two nations has lasted more than about 
two years. In most recent wars the opera- 
tions of the first ninety days have decided 
the result of the conflict. All that followed 
has been a mere vain effort to strive against 
the stars in their courses by doing at the 
twelfth hour what it was useless to do after 
the eleventh. 

We must therefore make up our minds 
once for all to the fact that it is too late to 
make ready for war when the fight has once 
begun. The preparation must come before 
that. In the case of the Civil War none of 
these conditions applied. In 1861 we had a 
good fleet, and the Southern Confederacy 
had not a ship. We were able to blockade 
the Southern ports at once, and we could 
improvise engines of war more than suffi- 
cient to put against those of an enemy who 
also had to improvise them, and who labored 
under even more serious disadvantages. 
The Monitor was got ready in the nick of 
time to meet the Merrimac, because the 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM iS9 

Confederates had to plan and build the lat- 
ter while we were planning and building the 
former; but if ever we have to go to war 
with a modern military power we shall find 
its Merrimacs already built, and it will then 
be altogether too late to try to build Mon- 
itors to meet therti. 

If this point needs any emphasis surely 
the history of the war of 1812 applies to it. 
For twelve years before that war broke out 
even the blindest could see that we were al- 
most certain to be drawn into hostilities with 
one or the other of the pair of combatants 
whose battle royal ended at Waterloo. Yet 
we made not the slightest preparation for 
war. The authorities at Washington con- 
tented themselves with trying to build a flo- 
tilla of gunboats which could defend our 
own harbors without making it necessary to 
take the offensive ourselves. We already 
possessed a dozen first-class cruisers, but 
not a battle-ship of any kind. With almost 
incredible folly the very Congress that de- 
clared war voted down the bill to increase 



i6o A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

the Navy by twenty battle-ships ; though it 
was probably too late then, anyhow, for even 
under the simpler conditions of that day 
such a fleet could not have been built and 
put into first-class order in less than a couple 
of years. Bitterly did the nation pay for 
its want of foresight and forethought. Our 
cruisers won a number of striking victories, 
heartening and giving hope to the nation in 
the face of disaster; but they were power- 
less to do material harm to the gigantic na- 
val strength of Great Britain. Efforts were 
made to increase our little Navy, but in the 
face of a hostile enemy already possessing 
command of the seas this was impossible. 
Two or three small cruisers were built ; but 
practically almost all the fighting on the 
ocean was done by the handful of frigates 
and sloops which we possessed when the 
v/ar broke out. Not a battle-ship was able 
to put to sea until after peace was restored. 
Meanwhile our coast was blockaded from 
one end to the other and was harried at will 
by the hostile squadrons. Our capital city 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM i6i 

was burned, and the ceaseless pressure of 
the blockade produced such suffering and 
irritation as nearly to bring about a civil 
war among ourselves. If in the first dec- 
ade of the present century the American 
people and their rulers had possessed the 
wisdom to provide an efficient fleet of pow- 
erful battle-ships there would probably have 
been no war of 1812; and even if war had 
come, the immense loss to, and destruction 
of, trade and commerce by the blockade 
would have been prevented. Merely from 
the monetary standpoint the saving would 
have been incalculable ; and yet this would 
have been the smallest part of the gain. 

It can therefore be taken for granted that 
there must be adequate preparation for con- 
flict, if conflict is not to mean disaster. Fur- 
thermore, this preparation must take the 
shape of an efficient fighting navy. We 
have no foe able to conquer or overrun our 
territory. Our small army should always 
be kept in first-class condition, and every at- 
tention should be paid to the National 



i62 A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

Guard; but neither on the North nor the 
South have we neighbors capable of menac- 
ing us with invasion or long resisting a seri- 
ous effort on our part to invade them. The 
enemies we may have to face will come 
from over the sea; they may come from 
Europe, or they may come from Asia. 
Events move fast in the West ; but this gen- 
eration has been forced to see that they 
move even faster in the oldest East. Our 
interests are as great in the Pacific as in the 
Atlantic, in the Hawaiian Islands as in the 
West Indies. Merely for the protection of 
our own shores we need a great navy ; and 
what is more, we need it to protect our in- 
terests in the islands from which it is possi- 
ble to command our shores and to protect 
our commerce on the high seas. 

In building this navy, we must remember 
two things: First, that our ships and guns 
should be the very best of their kind; and 
second, that no matter how good they are, 
they will be useless unless the man in the 
conning tower and the man behind the guns 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 163 

are also the best of their kind. It is mere 
folly to send men to perish because they 
have arms with which they cannot win. 
With poor ships, were an Admiral Nelson 
and Farragut rolled in one, he might be 
beaten by any first-class fleet ; and he surely 
v/ould be beaten if his opponents were in 
any degree his equals in skill and courage; 
but without this skill and courage no per- 
fection of material can avail, and with them 
very grave shortcomings in equipment may 
be overcome. The men who command our 
ships must have as perfect weapons ready 
to their hands as can be found in the civi- 
lized world, and they must be trained to the 
highest point in using them. They must 
have skill in handling the ships, skill in tac- 
tics, skill in strategy, for ignorant courage 
cannot avail ; but without courage neither 
will skill avail. They must have in them 
the dogged ability to bear punishment, the 
power and desire to inflict it, the daring, 
the resolution, the willingness to take risks 
and incur responsibility which have been 



i64 A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

possessed by the great captains of all ages, 
and without which no man can ever hope 
to stand in the front rank of fighting men. 

Tame submission to foreign aggression 
of any kind is a mean and unworthy thing ; 
but it is even meaner and more unworthy to 
bluster first, and then either submit or else 
refuse to make those preparations which can 
alone obviate the necessity for submission. 
I believe with all my heart in the Monroe 
Doctrine, and, I believe also that the great 
mass of the American people are loyal to 
it ; but it is worse than idle to announce our 
adherence to this doctrine and yet to de- 
cline to take measures to show that ours is 
not mere lip loyalty. We had far better 
submit to interference by foreign powers 
with the affairs of this continent than to 
announce that we will not tolerate such 
interference, and yet refuse to make ready 
the means by which alone we can prevent 
it. In public as in private life, a bold front 
tends to insure peace and not strife. If 
we possess a formidable navy, small is the 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 165 

chance indeed that we shall ever be dragged 
into a war to uphold the Monroe Doctrine. 
If we do not possess such a navy, war may- 
be forced on us at any time. 

It is certain, then, that we need a first- 
class navy. It is equally certain that this 
should not be merely a navy for defense. 
Our chief harbors should, of course, be for- 
tified and put in condition to resist the at- 
tack of an enemy's fleet; and one of our 
prime needs is an ample force of torpedo 
boats to use primarily for coast defense. 
But in war the mere defensive never pays, 
and can never result in anything but disas- 
ter. It is not enough to parry a blow. The 
surest way to prevent its repetition is to re- 
turn it. No master of the prize ring ever 
fought his way to supremacy by mere dex- 
terity in avoiding punishment. He had to 
win by inflicting punishment. If the enemy 
is given the choice of time and place to at- 
tack, sooner or later he will do irreparable 
damage, and if he is at any point beaten 
back, why, after all, it is merely a repulse. 



i66 A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

and there are no means of following it up 
and making it a rout. We cannot rely upon 
coast protection alone. Forts and heavy 
land guns and torpedo boats are indispensa- 
ble, and the last, on occasion, may be used 
for offensive purposes also. But in the pres- 
ent state of naval and military knowledge 
we must rely mainly, as all great nations al- 
ways have relied, on the battle-ship, the 
fighting ship of the line. Gunboats and 
light cruisers serve an excellent purpose, 
and we could not do without them. In time 
of peace they are the police of the seas ; in 
time of war they would do some harrying of 
commerce, and a great deal of scouting and 
skirmishing; but our main reliance must be 
on the great armored battle-ships with 
their heavy guns and shot-proof vitals. In 
the last resort we most trust to the ships 
whose business it is to fight and not to run, 
and who can themselves go to sea and strike 
at the enemy when they choose, instead of 
waiting peacefully to receive his blow when 
and where he deems it best to deliver it 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 167 

If in the event of war our fleet of battle- 
ships can destroy the hostile fleet, then our 
coasts are safe from the menace of serious 
attack; even a fight that ruined our fleet 
would probably so shatter the hostile fleet 
as to do away with all chance of invasion; 
but if we have no fleet wherewith to meet 
the enemy on the high seas, or to anticipate 
his stroke by our own, then every city within 
reach of the tides must spend men and 
money in preparation for an attack that may 
not come, but which would cause crushing 
and irredeemable disaster if it did come. 

Still more is it necessary to have a fleet 
of great battle-ships if we intend to live 
up to the Monroe Doctrine, and to insist 
upon its observance in the two Americas 
and the islands on either side of them. If a 
foreign power, whether in Europe or Asia, 
should determine to assert its position in 
those lands wherein we feel that our influ- 
ence should be supreme, there is but one 
way in which we can effectively interfere. 
Diplomacy is utterly useless where there is 



i68 A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

no force behind it ; the diplomat is the serv- 
ant, not the master, of the soldier. The pros- 
perity of peace, commercial and material 
prosperity, gives no weight whatever when 
the clash of arms comes. Even great naked 
strength is useless if there is no immediate 
means through which that strength can 
manifest itself. If we mean to protect the 
people of the lands who look to us for pro- 
tection from tyranny and aggression; if we 
mean to uphold our interests in the teeth of 
the formidable Old World powers, we can 
only do it by being ready at any time, if the 
provocation is sufficient, to meet them on 
the seas, where the battle for supremacy 
must be fought . Unless we are prepared so 
to meet them, let us abandon all talk of de- 
votion to the Monroe Doctrine or to the 
honor of the American name. 
/ This nation cannot stand still if it is to 
retain its self-respect, and to keep undim- 
med the honorable traditions inherited from 
the men who with the sword founded it 
and by the sword preserved it. We ask that 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 169 

the work of upbuilding the Navy, and of 
putting the United States where it should 
be put among maritime powers, go forward 
without a break. We ask this not in the in- 
terest of war, but in the interest of peace. 
No nation should ever wage war wantonly, 
but no nation should ever avoid it at the 
cost of the loss of national honor. A 
nation should never fight unless forced to; 
but it should always be ready to fight. The 
mere fact that it is ready will generally spare 
it the necessity of fighting. If this coun- 
try now had a fleet of twenty battle-ships 
their existence would make it all the more 
likely that we should not have war. It is 
very important that we should, as a race 
keep the virile fighting qualities and should 
be ready to use them at need; but it is 
not at all important to use them unless there 
is need. One of the surest ways to attain 
these qualities is to keep our Navy in first- 
class trim. There never is, and never has 
been, on our part a desire to use a weapon 
because of its being well-tempered. There 



lyo A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

is not the least danger that the possession 
of a good navy will render this country 
overbearing toward its neighbors. The di- 
rect contrary is the truth. 

An unmanly desire to avoid a quarrel is 
often the surest way to precipitate one ; and 
utter unreadiness to fight is even surer. If 
at the time of our trouble with Chili, six 
years ago, we had not already possessed the 
nucleus of the new navy we should almost 
certainly have been forced into fighting, and 
even as it was trouble was only averted be- 
cause of the resolute stand then taken by the 
President and by the ofiicers of the Navy 
who were on the spot. If at that time the 
Chilians had been able to get ready the bat- 
tle-ship which was building for them, a war 
would almost certainly have followed, for 
we had no battleship to put against it. 

If in the future we have war, it will al- 
most certainly come because of some action, 
or lack of action, on our part in the way of 
refusing to accept responsibilities at the 
proper time, or failing to prepare for war 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 171 

when war does not threaten. An ignoble 
peace is even worse than an unsuccessful 
war; but an unsuccessful war would leave 
behind it a legacy of bitter memories which 
would hurt our national development for a 
generation to come. It is true that no na- 
tion could actually conquer us, owing to our 
isolated position ; but we would be seriously 
harmed, even materially, by disasters that 
stopped far short of conquest; and in these 
matters, which are far more important than 
things material, we could readily be dam- 
aged beyond repair. No material loss can 
begin to compensate for the loss of national 
self-respect. The damage to our commer- 
cial interests by the destruction of one of 
our coast cities would be as nothing com- 
pared to the humiliation which would be felt 
by every American worthy of the name if 
we had to submit to such an injury with- 
out amply avenging it. It has been finely 
said that " a gentleman is one who is willing 
to lay down his life for little things " ; that 
is for those things which seem little to the 



172 A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

man who cares only whether shares rise or 
fall in value, and to the timid doctrinaire 
who preaches timid peace from his clois- 
tered study. 

Much of that which is best and highest 
in national character is made up of glori- 
ous memories and traditions. The fight 
well fought, the life honorably lived, the 
death bravely met — those count for more in 
building a high and fine type of temper in 
a nation than any possible success in the 
stock market, than any possible prosperity 
in commerce or manufactures. A rich 
banker may be a valuable and useful citizen, 
but not a thousand rich bankers can leave to 
the country such a heritage as Farragut left, 
when, lashed in the rigging of the Hartford, 
he forged past the forts and over the un- 
seen death below, to try his wooden stem 
against the ironclad hull of the great Con- 
federate ram. The people of some given 
section of our country may be better off be- 
cause a shrewd and wealthy man has built 
up therein a great manufacturing business, 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM i73 

or has extended a line of railroad past its 
doors; but the whole nation is better, the 
whole nation is braver, because Gushing 
pushed his little torpedo-boat through the 
darkness to sink beside the sinking Albe- 
marie. 

Every feat of heroism makes us forever 
indebted to the man who performed it. All 
daring and courage, all iron endurance of 
misfortune, all devofion to the ideal of honor 
and the glory of the flag, make for a finer 
and nobler type of manhood. It is not only 
those who do and dare and endure that are 
benefited; but also the countless thousands 
who are not themselves called upon to face 
the peril, to show the strength, or to win 
the reward. All of us lift our heads higher 
because those of our countrymen whose 
trade it is to meet danger have met it well 
and bravely. All of us are poorer for every 
base or ignoble deed done by an American, 
for every instance of selfishness or weakness 
or folly on the part of -the people as a whole. 
We are all worse off when any of us fails 



174 A FORGOTTEN MAXIM 

at any point in his duty toward the State 
in time of peace, or his duty toward the 
State in time of war. If ever we had to 
meet defeat at the hands of a foreign foe, 
or had to submit tamely to wrong or insuh, 
every man among us worthy of the name of 
American would feel dishonored and de- 
based. On the other hand, the memory of 
every triumph won by Americans, by just 
so much helps to make each American 
nobler and better. Every man among us is 
which, in the past, the nation has tri- 
ties of citizenship because of the perils over 
which, in the past, the nation has tri- 
umphed ; because of the blood and sweat and 
tears, the labor and the anguish, through 
which, in the days that have gone, our fore- 
fathers moved on to triumph. There are 
higher things in this life than the soft and 
easy enjoyment of material comfort. It is 
through strife, or the readiness for strife, 
that a nation must win greatness. We ask 
for a great navy, partly because we think 
that the possession of such a navy is tlie 



A FORGOTTEN MAXIM i75 

surest guaranty of peace, and partly be- 
cause we feel that no national life is worth 
having if the nation is not willing, when the 
need shall arise, to stake everything on the 
supreme arbitrament of war, and to pour 
out its blood, its treasure, and its tears like 
water, rather than submit to the loss of 
honor and renown. 

In closing, let me repeat that we ask for 
a great navy, we ask for an armament fit 
for the nation's needs, not primarily to fight, 
but to avert fighting. Preparedness deters 
the foe, and maintains right by the show of 
ready might without the use of violence. 
Peace, like freedom, is not a gift that tar- 
ries long in the hands of cowards, or of 
those too feeble or too short-sighted to de- 
serve it; and we ask to be given the means 
to insure that honorable peace which alone 
is worth having. 



VI 

NATIONAL LIFE AND CHA- 
RACTER ' 

IN National Life and Character; a Fore- 
cast, Mr. Charles H. Pearson, late fellow 
of Oriel College, Oxford, and sometime Min- 
ister of Education in Victoria, has produced 
one of the most notable books of the end of 
the century. Mr. Pearson is not always quite 
so careful as he might be about his facts; 
many of the conclusions he draws from them 
seem somewhat strained ; and with much of 
his forecast most of us would radically dis- 
agree. Nevertheless, no one can read this 
book without feeling his thinking powers 
greatly stimulated ; without being forced to 
ponder problems of which he was previously 
wholly ignorant, or which he but half under- 
^ T/ie Sew am e Review, August, 1894. 
176 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER i77 

stood ; and without realizing that he is deal- 
ing with the work of a man of lofty thought 
and of deep and philosophic insight into the 
world-forces of the present. 

Mr. Pearson belongs to the melancholy or 
pessimist school, which has become so promi- 
nent in England during the last two or three 
decades, and which has been represented 
there for half a century. In fact, the note 
of despondency seems to be the dominant 
note among Englishmen of high cultivation 
at the present time. It is as marked among 
their statesmen and publicists as among their 
men of letters, Mr. Balfour being particu- 
larly happy in his capacity to express in 
good English, and with much genuine ele- 
vation of thought, a profound disbelief in 
nineteenth century progress, and an equally 
profound distrust of the future toward which 
we are all travelling. 

For much of this pessimism and for many 
of the prophecies which it evokes^ there is 
no excuse whatsoever. There may possibly 
be good foundation for the pessimism as to 



17^ NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

the future shown by men Hke Mr. Pearson ; 
but hitherto the writers of the stamp of the 
late " Cassandra " Greg who have been pes- 
simistic about the present, have merely be- 
trayed their own weakness or their own in- 
capacity to judge contemporary persons and 
events. The weakling, the man who cannot 
struggle with his fellow-men and with the 
conditions that surround him, is very apt to 
think these men and these conditions bad; 
and if he has the gift of writing, he puts 
these thoughts down at some length on 
paper. Very strong men, moreover, if of 
morose and dyspeptic temper, are apt to rail 
at the present, and to praise the past simply 
because they do not live in it. To any man 
who will consider the subject from a scien- 
tific point of view, with a desire to get at 
the truth, it is needless to insist on the fact 
that at no period of the world's history 
has there been so much happiness generally 
diffused among mankind as now. 

At no period of the world's history has life 
been so full of interest and of possibilities 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER i79 

of excitement and enjoyment as for us who 
live in the latter half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. This is not only true as far as the 
working classes are concerned, but it is es- 
pecially true as regards the men of means, 
and above all of those men of means who 
also possess brains and ambition. Never be- 
fore in the world's history have there been 
such opportunities thrown open to men, in 
the way of building new commonwealths, 
exploring new countries, conquering king- 
doms, and trying to adapt the governmental 
policy of old nations to new and strange con- 
ditions. The half-century which is now clos- 
ing, has held out to the people who have 
dwelt therein, some of the great prizes of 
history. Abraham Lincoln and Prince Bis- 
marck have taken their places among the 
world's worthies. Mighty masters of war 
have arisen in America, in Germany, in Rus- 
sia ; Lee and Grant, Jackson and Farragut, 
Moltke, Skobeleff, and the Red Prince. The 
work of the chiefs of mechanical and elec- 
trical invention has never been equalled be- 



i8o NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

fore, save perhaps by what was done in the 
first half of this same century. Never be- 
fore have there been so many opportunities 
for commonwealth builders ; new States have 
been pitched on the banks of the Saskatche- 
wan; the Columbia, the Missouri, and the 
Colorado, on the seacoast of Australia, and 
in the interior of Central Africa. Vast re- 
gions have been won by the sword. Bur- 
mah and Turkestan, Egypt and Matabele- 
land, have rewarded the prowess of English 
and Russian conquerors, exactly as, when 
the glory of Rome was at its height, remote 
Mediterranean provinces furnished triumphs 
to the great military leaders of the Eternal 
City. English administrators govern sub- 
ject empires larger than those conquered by 
Alexander. In letters no name has been pro- 
duced that will stand with the first half- 
dozen of all literature, but there have been 
very many borne by men whose effect upon 
the literatures of their own countries has 
been profound, and whose works will last as 
long as the works of any men written in 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER i8i 

the same tongues. In science even more has 
been done ; Darwm has fairly revolutionized 
thought ; and many others stand but a step 
below him. 

All this means only that the opportunities 
have been exceptionally great for the men 
of exceptionally great powers ; but they have 
also been great for the men of ordinary pow- 
ers. The workingman is, on the whole, bet- 
ter fed, better clothed, better housed, and 
provided with greater opportunities for pleas- 
ure and for mental and spiritual improve- 
ment than ever before. The man with ability 
enough to become a lawmaker has the fear- 
ful joy of grappling with problems as im- 
portant as any the administrators and legis- 
lators of the past had to face. The ordinary 
man of adventurous tastes and a desire to 
get all out of life that can be gotten, is beyond 
measure better off than were his forefathers 
of one, two, or three centuries back. He 
can travel round the world ; he can dwell in 
any country he wishes; he can explore 
strange regions ; he can spend years by him- 



i82 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

self in the wilderness, hunting great game ; 
he can take part in a campaign here and 
there. Whithersoever his tastes lead him, he 
finds that he has far greater capacity con- 
ferred upon him by the conditions of nine- 
teenth-century civilization to do something 
of note than ever a man of his kind had 
before. If he is observant, he notes all 
around him the play of vaster forces 
than have ever before been exerted, 
working, half blindly, half under con- 
trol, to bring about immeasurable results. 
He sees going on before his eyes a great 
transfer of population and civilization, which 
is making America north of the Rio Grande, 
and Australia, English-speaking continents ; 
which has filled Central and South America 
with States of uncertain possibilities; which 
is creating for the first time a huge Aryan 
nation across the entire north of Asia, and 
which is working changes in Africa infinitely 
surpassing in importance all those that have 
ever taken place there since the days when 
the Bantu peoples first built their beehive 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 183 

huts on the banks of the Congo and the 
Zambezi. Our century has teemed with Hfe 
and interest. 

Yet this is the very century at which Car- 
lyle railed ; and it is strange to think that he 
could speak of the men at that very moment 
engaged in doing such deeds, as belonging 
to a worn-out age. His vision was clear to 
see the importance and the true bearing of 
England's civil war of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, and yet he remained mole-blind to the 
vaster and more important civil war waged 
before his very eyes in nineteenth-century 
America. The heroism of Naseby and Wor- 
cester and Minden hid from him the heroism 
of Balaklava and Inkerman, of Lucknow and 
Delhi. He could appreciate at their worth 
the campaigns of the Seven Years' War, and 
yet could hardly understand those waged be- 
tween the armies of the Potomac and of 
Northern Virginia. He was fairly inspired 
by the fury and agony and terror of the 
struggle at Kunnersdorf ; and yet could not 
appreciate the immensely greater importance 



i84 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

of the death-wrestle that reeled round Get- 
tysburg. His eyes were so dazzled by the 
great dramas of the past that he could not 
see the even greater drama of the present. It 
is but the bare truth to say that never have 
the rewards been greater, never has there 
been more chance for doing work of great 
and lasting value, than this last half of the 
nineteenth century has offered alike to states- 
man and soldier, to explorer and common- 
wealth-builder, to the captain of industry, to 
the man of letters, and to the man of science. 
Never has life been more interesting to each 
to take part in. Never has there been a 
greater output of good work done both by 
the few and by the many. 

Nevertheless, signs do not fail that we 
are on the eve of great changes, and that in 
the next century we shall see the conditions 
of our lives, national and individual, modi- 
fied after a sweeping and radical fashion. 
Many of the forces that make for national 
greatness and for individual happiness in the 
nineteenth century, will be absent entirely, 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 185 

or will act with greatly diminished strength, 
in the twentieth. Many of the forces that 
now make for evil will by that time have 
gained greatly in volume and power. It is 
foolish to look at the future with blind and 
careless optimism ; quite as foolish as to gaze 
at it only through the dun-colored mists that 
surround the preachers of pessimism. It is 
always best to look at facts squarely in the 
face, without blinking them, and to remem- 
ber that as has been well said, in the long 
run even the most uncomfortable truth is a 
safer companion than the pleasantest false- 
hood. 

Whether the future holds good or evil for 
us does not, it is true, alter our duty in the 
present. We must stand up valiantly in the 
fight for righteousness and wisdom as we see 
them, and must let the event turn out as it 
may. Nevertheless, even though there is lit- 
tle use in pondering over the future, most 
men of intelligence do ponder over it at 
times, and if we think of it at all, it is well 
to think clearly. 



i86 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

Mr. Pearson writes a forecast of what he 
believes probably will, or at least very possi- 
bly may happen in the development of na- 
tional life and character during the era upon 
which we are now entering. He is a man 
who has had exceptional advantages for 
his work; he has studied deeply and 
travelled widely; he has been a diligent 
reader of books and a keen observer of 
men. To a careful training in one of 
the oldest of the world's universities he 
has added long experience as an execu- 
tive officer in one of the world's young- 
est commonwealths. He writes with power 
and charm. His book is interesting in man- 
ner, and is still more interesting in matter, 
for he has thought deeply and faithfully over 
subjects of immense importance to the fu- 
ture of all the human race. He possesses a 
mind of marked originality. Moreover, he 
always faithfully tries to see facts as they 
actually are. He is, it seems to me, unduly 
pessimistic; but he is not pessimistic of set 
purpose, nor does he adopt pessimism as a 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 187 

cult. He tries hard, and often successfully, 
to make himself see and to make himself 
state forces that are working for good. We 
may or may not differ from him, but it be- 
hooves us, if we do, to state our positions 
guardedly; for we are dealing with a man 
who has displayed much research in getting 
at his facts and much honesty in arriving at 
his rather melancholy conclusions. 

The introduction to Mr. Pearson's book is 
as readable as the chapters that follow, and 
may best be considered in connection with 
the first of these chapters, which is entitled 
" The Unchangeable Limits of the Higher 
Races." I am almost tempted to call this the 
most interesting of the six chapters of the 
book, and yet one can hardly do so when 
absorbed in reading any one of the other 
five. Mr. Pearson sees what ought to be 
evident to every one, but apparently is not, 
that what he calls the " higher races," that 
is, the races that for the last twenty-five 
hundred years (but, it must be remembered, 
only during the last twenty-five hundred 



1 88 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

years) have led the world, can prosper 
only under conditions of soil and climate 
analogous to those obtaining in their old 
European homes. Speaking roughly, this 
means that they can prosper only in the 
temperate zones, north and south. 

Four hundred years ago the temperate 
zones were very thinly peopled indeed, while 
the tropical and sub-tropical regions were 
already densely populated. The great fea- 
ture in the world's history for the last four 
centuries has been the peopling of these vast, 
scantily inhabited regions by men of the Eu- 
ropean stocks; notably by men speaking 
English, but also by men speaking Russian 
and Spanish. During the same centuries 
these European peoples have for the first 
time acquired an enormous ascendency over 
all other races. Once before, during the 
days of the Greco-Macedonian and Roman 
supremacy, European peoples possessed a 
somewhat similar supremacy ; but it was not 
nearly as great, for at that period America 
and Australia were unknown, Africa south 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 189 

of the Sahara was absolutely unaffected by 
either Roman or Greek, and all but an in- 
significant portion of Asia was not only 
without the pale of European influence, but 
held within itself immense powers of men- 
ace to Europe, and contained old and pecul- 
iar civilizations, still flourishing in their 
prime. All this has now been changed. 
Great English-speaking nations have sprung 
up in America north of the Rio Grande, and 
are springing up in Australia. The Russians, 
by a movement which has not yet fired the 
popular imagination, but which all thinking 
men recognize as of incalculable importance, 
are building a vast State in northern Asia, 
stretching from the Yellow Sea to the Ural 
Mountains. Tropical America is parcelled 
out among States partly of European blood, 
and mainly European in thought, speech 
and religion ; while tropical Asia and Africa 
have been divided among European powers, 
and are held in more or less complete sub- 
jection by their military and civil agents. It 
is no wonder that micn who are content to 



I90 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

look at things superficiall}^ and who think 
that the tendencies that have triumphed dur- 
ing the last two centuries are as immutable 
in their workings as great natural laws, 
should speak as if it were a mere question 
of time when the civilized peoples should 
overrun and occupy the entire world, exactly 
as they now do Europe and North America. 
Mr. Pearson points out with great clear- 
ness the groundlessness of this belief. He 
deserves especial praise for discriminating 
between the importance of ethnic, and of 
merely political, conquests. The conquest 
by one country of another populous country 
always attracts great attention at the time, 
and has wide momentary effects ; but it is of 
insignificant importance when compared 
with the kind of armed settlement which 
causes new nations of an old stock to spring 
up in new countries. The campaigns car- 
ried on by the lieutenants of Justinian 
against Goth and Vandal, Bulgarian and 
Persian, seemed in the eyes of civilized Eu- 
rope at that time of incalculably greater mo- 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 191 

ment than the squaHd warfare being waged 
in England between the descendants of Low 
Dutch sea-thieves and the aboriginal Brit- 
ish. Yet, in reality, it was of hardly any 
consequence in history whether Belisarius 
did or did not succeed in overthrowing the 
Ostrogoth merely to make room for the 
Lombard, or whether the Vandal did or did 
not succumb to the Roman instead of suc- 
cumbing to the Saracen a couple of cen- 
turies later; while it was of the most vital 
consequence to the whole future of the 
world that the English should supplant the 
Welsh as masters of Britain. 

Again, in our own day, the histories writ- 
ten of Great Britain during the last century 
teem with her dealings with India, while 
Australia plays a very insignificant part in- 
deed; yet, from the standpoint of the ages, 
peopling of the great island-continent with 
men of the English stock is a thousand fold 
more important than the holding Hindoo- 
stan for a few centuries. 

Mr. Pearson understands and brings out 



192 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

clearly that in the long run a conquest must 
fail when it means merely the erection of an 
insignificant governing caste. He shows 
clearly that the men of our stock do not 
prosper in tropical countries. In the New 
World they leave a thin strain of their blood 
among and impose their laws, language, and 
forms of government on the aboriginal races, 
which then develop on new and dimly drawn 
lines. In the Old World they fail to do even 
this. In Asia they may leave a few tens of 
thousands or possibly hundreds of thousands 
of Eurasians to form an additional caste in a 
caste-ridden community. In tropical Africa 
they may leave here and there a mulatto 
tribe like the Griquas. But it certainly has 
not yet been proved that the European can 
live and propagate permanently in the hot 
regions of India and Africa, and Mr. Pear- 
son is right in anticipating for the whites 
who have conquered these tropical and sub- 
tropical regions of the Old World, the same 
fate which befell the Greek kingdoms in 
Bactria and the Chersonese. The Greek rul- 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER I93 

ers of Bactria were ultimately absorbed and 
vanished, as probably the English rulers of 
India will some day in the future — for the 
good of mankind, we sincerely hope and be- 
lieve the very remote future — themselves be 
absorbed and vanish. In Africa south of 
the Zambezi (and possibly here and there 
on high plateaus north of it,) there may re- 
main white States, although even these 
States will surely contain a large colored 
population, always threatening to swamp the 
whites; but in tropical Africa generally, it 
does not seem possible that any white State 
can ever be built up. Doubtless for many 
centuries European adventurers and Arab 
raiders will rule over huge territories in the 
country south of the Soudan and north of 
the Tropic of Capricorn, and the whole struc- 
ture, not only social, but physical, of the 
negro and the negroid peoples will be pro- 
foundly changed by their influence and by 
the influence of the half-caste descendants 
of these European and Asiatic soldiers of 
fortune and industry. But it is hardly 



194 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

possible to conceive that the peoples of 
Africa, however ultimately changed, will 
be anything but negroid in type of body 
and mind. It is probable that the change 
will be in the direction of turning them into 
tribes like those of the Soudan, with a simi- 
lar religion and morality. It is almost im- 
possible that they will not in the end suc- 
ceed in throwing off the yoke of the Eu- 
ropean outsiders, though this end may be, 
and we hope will be, many centuries distant. 
In America, most of the West Indies are 
becoming negro islands. The Spaniard, 
however, because of the ease with which he 
drops to a lower ethnic level, exerts a much 
more permanent influence than the English- 
man upon tropic aboriginal races ; and the 
tropical lands which the Spaniards and 
Portuguese once held, now contain, and al- 
ways will contain, races which, though dif- 
ferent from the Aryan of the Temper- 
ate zone, yet bridge the gulf between him 
and the black, red, and yellow peoples who 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER i95 

have dwelt from time immemorial on both 
sides of the equator. 

Taking all this into consideration, there- 
fore, it is most likely that a portion of Mr. 
Pearson's forecast, as regards the people 
of the tropic zones, will be justified by events. 
It is impossible for the dominant races of 
the temperate zones ever bodily to displace 
the peoples of the tropics. It is highly prob- 
able that these people will cast off the yoke 
of their European conquerors sooner or later, 
and will become independent nations once 
more; though it is also possible that the 
modern conditions of easy travel may per- 
mit the permanent rule in the tropics of a 
vigorous northern race, renewed by a com- 
plete change every generation. 

Mr. Pearson's further proposition is that 
these black, red, and yellow nations, when 
thus freed, will threaten the dominance of 
the higher peoples, possibly by military, cer- 
tainly by industrial, rivalry, and that the 
mere knowledge of the equality of these 
stocks will cow and dispirit the higher races. 



196 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

This part of his argument is open to very 
serious objections. In the first place, Mr. 
Pearson entirely fails to take into account 
the difference in character among the nation- 
alities produced in the tropics as the result 
of European conquest. In Asia, doubtless, 
the old races now submerged by European 
predominance will reappear, profoundly 
changed in themselves, and in their relations 
to one another, but as un-European as ever, 
and not appreciably affected by any inter- 
mixture of European blood. In Africa, the 
native States will probably range somewhere 
between the Portuguese half-caste and quar- 
ter-caste communities now existing on cer- 
tain of the tropic coasts, and pastoral or ag- 
ricultural comm.unities, with a Mohammedan 
religious cult and Asiatic type of govern- 
ment, produced by the infusion of a conquer- 
ing Semitic or hamitic caste on a conquered 
negro people. There may be a dominant 
caste of European blood in some of these 
States, but that is all. In tropical America, 
the change has already taken place. The 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER ^91 

States that there exist will not materially 
alter their form. It is possible that here and 
there populations of Chinese, pure or half- 
caste, or even of coolies, may spring up ; but 
taken as a whole, these States will be in the 
future what they are now, that is, they will 
be by blood partly white, but chiefly Indian 
or negro, with their language, law, religion, 
literature, and governmental system ap- 
proaching those of Europe and North 
America. 

Suppose that what Mr. Pearson foresees 
comes to pass, and that the black and yellow 
races of the world attain the same independ- 
ence already achieved by the mongrel red- 
dish race. Mr. Pearson thinks that this will 
expose us to two dangers. The first is that 
of actual physical distress caused by the com- 
petition of the teeming myriads of the trop- 
ics, or perhaps by their invasion of the Tem- 
perate zones. Mr. Pearson himself does 
not feel any very great anxiety about this 
invasion assuming a military type, and I 
think that even the fear he does express is 



198 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

unwarranted by the facts. He is immensely 
impressed by the teeming populaticm of 
China. He thinks that the Chinese will some 
day constitute the dominant portion of the 
population, both politically and numerically, 
in the East Indies, New Guinea, and Far- 
ther India. In this he is probably quite 
right; but such a change would merely 
mean the destruction or submersion of Ma- 
lay, Dyak, and Papuan and would be of 
hardly any real consequence to the white 
man. He further thinks that the Chinese 
may jeopardize Russia in Asia. Here I am 
inclined to think he is wrong. As far as it is 
possible to judge in the absence of statistics, 
the Chinaman at present is not increasing 
relatively as fast as the Slav and the Anglo- 
Saxon. Half a century or so more will put 
both of them within measurable distance of 
equality with him, even in point of num- 
bers. The movement of population in China 
is toward the south, not the north ; the men- 
ace is real for the English and French pro- 
tectorates in the south ; in the north the diffi- 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER i99 

culty hitherto has been to keep Russian set- 
tlers from crossing the Chinese frontier. 
When the great Trans-Siberian railroad is 
built, and when a few millions more of Rus- 
sian settlers stretch from the Volga to the 
valley of the Amoor,the danger of a military 
advance by the Chinese against Asiatic Rus- 
sia will be entirely over, even granting that 
it now exists. The Chinaman never has 
been, and probably never will be, such a 
fighter as Turk or Tartar, and he would 
have to possess an absolutely overwhelming 
superiority of numbers to give him a chance 
in a war of aggression against a powerful 
military race. As yet, he has made no ad- 
vance whatever towards developing an army 
capable of offensive work against European 
foes. In China there are no roads ; the mili- 
tary profession is looked down on ; Chinese 
troops would be formidable only under a 
European leader, and a European leader 
would be employed only from dire necessity ; 
that is to repel, not to undertake an invasion. 
Moreover, China is merely an aggregate of 



200 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

provinces with a central knot at Pekin ; and 
Pekin could be taken at any time by a small 
trained army. China will not menace Si- 
beria until after undergoing some stupend- 
ous and undreamed-of internal revolution 
It is scarcely within the bounds of possibility 
to conceive of the Chinaman expelling the 
European settler from lands in which that 
settler represents the bulk of a fairly thick 
population, not merely a small intrusive 
caste. It is, of course, always possible that 
in the far-distant future (though there is no 
sign of it now) China may travel on the path 
of Japan, may change her policy, may de- 
velop fleets and armies; but if she does do 
this, there is no reason why this fact should 
stunt and dwarf the people of the higher 
races. In Elizabeth's day the Turkish fleets 
and armies stood towards those of European 
powers in a far higher position than those of 
China, or of the tropics generally, can ever 
hope to stand in relation to the peoples of 
the Temperate zones; and yet this did not 
hinder the Elizabethan Age from being one 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 201 

of great note both in the field of thought and 
in the field of action. 

The anticipation of what might happen if 
India became solidified seems even more ill- 
founded. Here Mr. Pearson's position is 
that the very continuance of European rule, 
doing away with war and famine, produces 
an increase of population and a solidity of 
the country, which will enable the people to 
overthrow that European rule. He assumes 
that the solidified and populous country will 
continue to remain such after the overthrov/ 
of the Europeans, and will be capable of 
deeds of aggression; but, of course, such 
an assumption is contrary to all probabilities. 
Once the European rule was removed, fam- 
ine and internecine war would again become 
chronic, and India would sink back to her 
former place. Moreover, the long continu- 
ance of British rule undoubtedly weakens 
the war-like fibre of the natives, and makes 
the usurer rather than the soldier the dom- 
inant type. 

The danger to which Mr. Pearson alludes. 



202 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

that even the negro peoples may in time be- 
come vast mihtary powers, constituting a 
menace to Europe, really seems to belong to 
a period so remote that every condition will 
have changed to a degree rendering it im- 
possible for us to make any estimate in ref- 
erence thereto. By that time the descendant 
of the negro may be as intellectual as the 
Athenian. Even prophecy must not look 
too many thousand years ahead. It is per- 
fectly possible that European settlements in 
Africa will be swamped some time by the 
rising of natives who outnumber them a 
hundred or a thousand to one, but it is not 
possible that the negroes will form a mili- 
tary menace to the people of the north, at 
least for a space of time longer than that 
which now separates us from the men of the 
River Drift. The negroid peoples, the so- 
called '* hamitic," and bastard Semitic, races 
of eastern middle Africa are formidable 
fighters ; but their strength is not fit for any 
such herculean tasks. 

There is much more reason to fear the in- 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 203 

dustrial competition of these races ; but even 
this will be less formidable as the power of 
the State increases and especially as the 
democratic idea obtains more and more cur- 
rency. The Russians are not democratic at 
all, but the State is very powerful with 
them ; and therefore they keep the Chinese 
out of their Siberian provinces, which are 
being rapidly filled up with a population 
mainly Slav, the remainder of which is be- 
ing Slavicized. From the United States and 
Australia the Chinaman is kept out because 
the democracy, with much clearness of vi- 
sion, has seen that his presence is ruinous 
to the white race. 

Nineteenth century democracy needs no 
more complete vindication for its existence 
than the fact that it has kept for the white 
race the best portions of the new worlds' 
surface, temperate America and Australia. 
Had these regions been under aristocratic 
governments, Chinese immigration would 
have been encouraged precisely as the slave 
trade is encouraged of necessity by any 



204 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

slave-holding oligarchy, and the result would 
in a few generations have been even more 
fatal to the white race; but the democracy, 
with the clear instinct of race selfishness, 
saw the race foe, and kept out the danger- 
ous alien. The presence of the negro in our 
Southern States is a legacy from the time 
when we were ruled by a trans-oceanic aris- 
tocracy. The whole civilization of the future 
owes a debt of gratitude greater than can be 
expressed in words to that democratic policy 
which has kept the temperate zones of the 
new and the newest worlds a heritage for 
the white pepole. 

As for the industrial competition, the 
Chinamrm and the Hindoo may drive certain 
kinds of white traders from the tropics; but 
more than this they cannot do. They can 
never change the status of the white laborer 
in his own home, for the latter can always 
protect himself, and as soon as he is seriously 
menaced, always will protect himself, by pro- 
tective tariffs and stringent immigration 
laws. 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 205 

Mr. Pearson fears that when once the 
tropic races are independent, the white peo- 
ples will be humiliated and will lose heart; 
but this does not seem inevitable, and indeed 
seems very improbable. If the Englishman 
should lose his control over South Africa and 
India, it might indeed be a serious blow to 
the Englishman of Britain; though it may 
be well to remember that the generation of 
Englishmen which grew up immediately af- 
ter England had lost America, accomplished 
feats in arms, letters, and science such as, 
on the whole, no other English generation 
ever accomplished. Even granting that 
Britain were to suffer as Mr. Pearson thinks 
she would, the enormous majority of the 
English-speaking peoples, those whose 
homes are in America and Australia, would 
be absolutely unaffected; and Continental 
Europe would be little more affected than it 
was when the Portuguese and Dutch succes- 
sively saw their African and Indian empires 
diminish. France has not been affected by 
the expulsion of the French from Playti ; nor 



2o6 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

have the freed negroes of Hayti been capable 
of the smallest aggressive movement. No 
American or Australian cares in the least 
that the tan-colored peoples of Brazil and 
Ecuador now live under governments of 
their own instead of being ruled by viceroys 
from Portugal and Spain; and it is difficult 
to see why they should be materially af- 
fected by a similar change happening in re- 
gard to the people along the Ganges or the 
upper Nile. Even if China does become a 
military power on the European model, this 
fact will hardly affect the American and 
Australian at the end of the twentieth cen- 
tury more than Japan's effort to get admitted 
to the circle of civilized nations has affected 
us at the end of the nineteenth. 

Finally, it must be borne in mind that if 
any one of the tropical races ever does reach 
a pitch of industrial and military prosperity 
which makes it a menace to European and 
American countries, it will almost necessarily 
mean that this nation has itself become civi- 
lized in the process ; and we shall then simply 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 207 

be dealing with another civilized nation of 
non-aryan blood, precisely as we now deal 
with Magyar, Fin, and Basque, without any 
thought of their being ethnically distinct 
from Croat, Rouman, or Wend. 

In Mr. Pearson's second chapter he deals 
with the stationary order of society, and 
strives to show that while we are all tending 
toward it, some nations, notably France, 
have practically come to it. He adds that 
when this stationary state is reached, it will 
produce general discourasfement. and will 
probably affect the intellectual energy of 
the people concerned. He further points out 
that our races now tend to change from 
faith in private enterprises to faith in State 
organizations, and that this is likely to 
diminish the vigorous originality of any 
race. He even holds that we already see the 
beginning of a decadence, in the decline of 
speculative thought, and still more in the 
way of mechanical inventions. It is per- 
fectly true that the laissez-faire doctrine of 
the old school of political economists is re- 



2o8 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

ceiving, less and less favor ; but after all, 
if we look at events historically, we see that 
every race, as it has grown to civilized 
greatness, has used the power of the State 
more and more. A great State cannot rely 
on mere unrestricted individualism, any 
more than it can afford to crush out all in- 
dividualism. Within limits, the merciless- 
ness of private commercial warfare must be 
curbed as we have curbed the individual's 
right of private war power. It was not un- 
til the power of the State had become great 
in England, and until the lawless individual- 
ism of feudal times had vanished, that the 
English people began that career of great- 
ness which has put them on a level with the 
Greeks in point of intellectual achievement, 
and with the Romans in point of that ma- 
terial success which is measured by exten- 
sion through settlement, by conquest, by tri- 
umphant warcraft and statecraft. As for 
Mr. Pearson's belief that we now see a de- 
cline in speculative thought and in mechan- 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 209 

ical invention, all that can be said is that the 
facts do not bear him out. 

There is one side to this stationary state 
theory which Mr. Pearson scarcely seems to 
touch. He points out with emphasis the 
fact, which most people are prone to deny, 
that the higher orders of every society tend 
to die out; that there is a tendency, on the 
whole, for both lower classes and lower civil- 
izations to increase faster than the higher. 
Taken in the rough, his position on this 
point is undoubtedly correct. Progressive 
societies, and the most progressive portions 
of society, fail to increase as fast as the 
others, and often positively decrease. The 
great commanders, great statesmen, great 
poets, great men of science of any period 
taken together do not average as many chil- 
dren who reach years of maturity as a sim- 
ilar number of mechanics, workmen, and 
farmers, taken at random. Nevertheless, so- 
ciety progresses, the improvement being due 
mainly to the transmission of acquired char- 



2IO NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

acters, a process which in every civiUzed 
State operates so strongly as to counterbal- 
ance the operation of that baleful law of nat- 
ural selection which tells against the survival 
of some of the most desirable classes. Mr. 
Balfour, by the way, whose forecast for the 
race is in some respects not unlike Mr. Pear- 
son's, seems inclined to adopt the view that 
acquired characteristics cannot be inherited ; 
a position which, even though supported by 
a few eminent names, is hardly worthy seri- 
ous refutation. 

The point I wish to dwell upon here, how- 
ever, is that it is precisely in those castes 
which have reached the stationary state, or 
which are positively diminishing in num- 
bers, that the highest culture and best train- 
ing, the keenest enjoyment of life, and 
the greatest power of doing good to the 
community are to be found at present. Un- 
questionably no community that is actually 
diminishing in numbers is in a healthy con- 
dition: and as the world is now, with huge 
waste places still to fill up, and with much of 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 211 

the competition between the races reduc- 
ing itself to the warfare of the cradle, no 
race has any chance to win a ^reat place 
unless it consists of good breeders as well 
as of good fighters. But it may well be 
that these conditions will change in the 
future, when the other changes to which Mr. 
Pearson looks forward with such melan- 
choly, are themselves brought about. A na- 
tion sufficiently populous to be able to hold 
its own against aggression from without, a 
nation which, while developing the virtues 
of refinement, culture, and learning, has yet 
not lost those of courage, bold initiative, and 
military hardihood, might well play a great 
part in the world, even though it had come 
to that stationary state already reached by 
the dominant castes of thinkers and doers 
in most of the dominant races. 

In Mr. Pearson's third chapter he dwells 
on some of the dangers of political develop- 
ment, and in especial upon the increase of 
the town at the expense of the country, and 
upon the growth of great standing armies. 



21^ NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

Excessive urban development undoubtedly 
does constitute a real and great danger. All 
that can be said about it is that it is quite 
impossible to prophesy how long this 
growth will continue. Moreover, some of 
the evils, as far as they really exist, will cure 
themselves. If townspeople do, generation 
by generation, tend to become stunted and 
weak, then they will die out, and the problem 
they cause will not be permanent ; while on 
the other hand, if the cities can be made 
healthy, both physically and morally, the ob- 
jections to them must largely disappear. As 
for standing armies, Mr. Pearson here seems 
to have too much thought of Europe only. 
In America and Australia there is no danger 
of the upgrowing of great standing armies : 
and, as he well shows, the fact that every 
citizen must undergo military training, is by 
no means altogether a curse to the nations 
of Continental Europe. 

There is one point, by the way, although 
a small point, where it may be worth while 
to correct Mr. Pearson's statement of a fact. 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 213 

In dwelling on what is undoubtedly the 
truth, that raw militia are utterly incompe- 
tent to make head against trained regular 
forces, he finds it necessary to explain away 
the defeat at New Orleans. In doing this, 
he repeats the story as it has been told by 
British historians from Sir Archibald Ali- 
son to Goldwin Smith. I hasten to say that 
the misstatement is entirely natural on Mr. 
Pearson's part ; he was simply copying, with- 
out sufficiently careful investigation, the 
legend adopted by one side to take the sting 
out of defeat. The way he puts it is that 
six thousand British under Pakenham, with- 
out artillery, were hurled against strong 
works defended by twice their numbers, and 
were beaten, as they would have been 
beaten had the works been defended by al- 
most any troops in the world. In the first 
place, Pakenham did not have six thousand 
men; he had almost ten thousand. In the 
second place, the Americans, instead of be- 
ing twice as numerous as the British, were 
but little more than half as numerous. In the 



214 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

third place, so far from being without artil- 
lery, the British were much superior to the 
Americans in this respect. Finally, they 
assailed a position very much less strong 
than that held by Soult when Wellington 
beat him at Toulouse with the same troops 
which were defeated by Jackson at New 
Orleans. The simple truth is that Jackson 
was a very good general, and that he had 
under him troops whom he had trained in 
successive campaigns against Indians and 
Spaniards, and that on the three occasions 
when he brought Pakenham to battle — that 
is, the night attack, the great artillery duel, 
and the open assault — the English soldiers, 
though they fought with the utmost gallan- 
try, were fairly and decisively beaten. 

This one badly-chosen premise does not, 
however, upset Mr. Pearson's conclusions. 
Plenty of instances can be taken from our 
war of 1812 to show how unable militia are 
to face trained regulars; and an equally 
striking example was that afforded at Castle- 
bar, in Ireland, in 1798, when a few hundred 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 215 

French regulars attacked with the bayonet 
and drove in headlong flight from a very 
strong position, defended by a powerful ar- 
tillery, five times their number of English, 
Scotch, and Irish militia. 

In Mr. Pearson's fourth chapter be deals, 
from a very noble standpoint, with some 
advantages of national feeling. With this 
chapter and with his praise of patriotism, 
and particularly of that patriotism which 
attaches itself to the whole country, and not 
to any section of it, we can only express our 
hearty agreement. 

In his fifth chapter, on '' The Decline of 
the Family " he sets forth, or seems to set 
forth, certain propositions with which I must 
as heartily disagree. He seems to lament the 
change which is making the irresponsible 
despot as much of an anomaly in the family 
as in the State. He seems to think that this 
will weaken the family. It may do so, in 
some instances, exactly as the abolition of a 
despotism may produce anarchy; but the 
movement is essentially as good in one case 



2i6 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

as in the other. To all who have known 
really happy family lives^ that is to all who 
have known or have witnessed the greatest 
happiness which there can be on this earth, 
it is hardly necessary to say that the highest 
ideal of the family is attainable only where 
the father and mother stand to each other as 
lovers and friends, with equal rights. In 
these homes the children are bound to father 
and mother by ties of love, respect, and 
obedience, which are simply strengthened by 
the fact that they are treated as reasonable 
beings with rights of their own, and that the 
rule of the household is changed to suit the 
changing years, as childhood passes into 
manhood and womanhood. In such a home 
the family is not weakened; it is strength- 
ened. This is no unattainable ideal. Every 
one knows hundreds of homes where it is 
more or less perfectly realized, and it is an 
ideal incomparably higher than the ideal of 
the beneficent autocrat which it has so 
largely supplanted. 

The final chapter of Mr. Pearson's book 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 217 

is entitled " The Decay of Character." He 
beHeves that our world is becoming a world 
with less adventure and energy, less bright- 
ness and hope. He believes that all the great 
books have been written, all the great dis- 
coveries made, all the great deeds done. He 
thinks that the adoption of State socialism in 
some form will crush out individual merit 
and the higher kinds of individual happiness. 
Of course, as to this, all that can be said is 
that men differ as to what will be the effect 
of the forces whose working he portrays, and 
that most of us w^ho live in the American 
democracy do not agree with him. It is to 
the last degree improbable that State social- 
ism will ever be adopted in its extreme form, 
save in a few places. It exists, of course, to 
a certain extent wherever a police force and 
a fire department exist; and the sphere of 
the State's action may be vastly increased 
without in any way diminishing the happi- 
ness of either the many or the few. It is 
€ven conceivable that a combination of legis- 
lative enactments and natural forces may 



2i8 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

greatly reduce the inequalities of wealth 
without in any way diminishing the real 
power of enjoyment or power for good 
work of what are now the favored classes. 
In our own country the best work has al- 
ways been produced by men who lived in 
castes or social circles where the standard of 
essential comfort was high; that is, where 
men were well clothed, well fed, well housed, 
and had plenty of books and the opportunity 
of using them; but where there was small 
room for extravagant luxury. We think 
that Mr. Pearson's fundamental error here 
is his belief that the raising of the mass 
necessarily means the lowering of the stand- 
ard of life for the fortunate few. Those of us 
who now live in communities where the na- 
tive American element is largest and where 
there is least inequality of conditions, know 
well that there is no reason whatever in the 
nature of things why, in the future, commu- 
nities should not spring up where there shall 
be no great extremes of poverty and wealth, 
and where, nevertheless, the power of civil- 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 219 

ization and the chances for happiness and 
for doing good work shall be greater than 
ever before. 

As to what Mr. Pearson says about the 
work of the world which is best worth doing 
being now done, the facts do not bear him 
out. He thinks that the great poems have 
all been written, that the days of the drama 
and the epic are past. Yet one of the great- 
est plays that has ever been produced, always 
excepting the plays of Shakespeare, was 
produced in this century; and if the world 
had to wait nearly two thousand years after 
the vanishing of the Athenian dramatists 
before Shakespeare appeared, and two hun- 
dred years more before Goethe wrote his 
one great play, we can well afford to suspend 
judgment for a few hundred years at least, 
before asserting that no country and no 
language will again produce another great 
drama. So it is with the epic. We are too 
near Milton, who came three thousand years 
after Homer, to assert that the centuries to 
come will never more see an epic. One race 



220 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

may grow feeble and decrepit and be unable 
to do any more work ; but another may take 
its place. After a time the Greek and Latin 
writers found that they had no more to say ; 
and a critic belonging to either nationality 
might have shaken his head and said that all 
the great themes had been used up and all 
the great ideas expressed; nevertheless, 
Dante, Cervantes, Moliere, Schiller, Chau- 
cer, and Scott, then all lay in the future. 

Again, Mr. Pearson speaks of statecraft 
at the present day as offering fewer prizes, 
and prizes of less worth than formerly, and 
as giving no chance for the development of 
men like Augustus Caesar, Richelieu, or 
Chatham. It is difficult to perceive how 
these men can be considered to belong to a 
different class from Bismarck, who is yet 
alive ; nor do we see why any English-speak- 
ing people should regard a statesman like 
Chatham, or far greater than Chatham, as 
an impossibility nowadays or, in the future. 
We Americans at least will with difficulty 
be persuaded that there has ever been a time 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 221 

when the nobler prize of achievement, suffer- 
ing, and success was offered to any states- 
man than was offered both to Washington 
and to Lincoln. So, when Mr. Pearson 
speaks of the warfare of civilized countries 
offering less chance to the individual than 
the warfare of savage and barbarous times, 
and of its being far less possible now than in 
old days for a man to make his personal in- 
fluence felt in warfare, we can only express 
our disagreement. No world-conquerer can 
arise save in or next to highly civilized 
States. There never has been a barbarian 
Alexander or Caesar, Hannibal or Napoleon. 
Sitting Bull and Rain-in-the-Face compare 
but ill with Von Moltke ; and no Norse king 
of all the heroic viking age even so much as 
began to exercise the influence upon the war- 
fare of his generation that Frederick the 
Great exercised on his. 

It is not true that character of necessity 
decays with the growth of civilization. It 
may, of course, be true in some cases. Civil- 
ization may tend to develop upon the lines 



222 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

of Byzantine, Hindoo, and Inca; and there 
are sections of Europe and sections of the 
United States where we now tend to pay 
heed exclusively to the peaceful virtues and 
to develop only a race of merchants, law- 
yers, and professors, who will lack the virile 
qualities that have made our race great and 
splendid. This development may come, but 
it need not come necessarily, and, on the 
whole, the probabilities are against its com- 
ing at all. 

Mr. Pearson is essentially a man of 
strength and courage. Looking into the 
future the future seems to him gray and un- 
attractive; but he does not preach any un- 
manly gospel of despair. He thinks that in 
time to come, though life will be freer than 
in the past from dangers and vicissitudes, yet 
it will contain fewer of the strong pleasures 
and of the opportunities for doing great 
deeds that are so dear to mighty souls. 
Nevertheless, he advises us all to front it 
bravely whether our hope be great or little; 
and he ends his book with these fine sen- 



NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 223 

tences : " Even so, there will still remain to 
us ourselves. Simply to do our work in life, 
and to abide the issue, if we stand erect be- 
fore the eternal calm as cheerfully as our 
fathers faced the eternal unrest, may be 
nobler training for our souls than the faith 
in progress." 

We do not agree with him that there will 
be only this eternal calm to face; we do not 
agree with him that the future holds for 
us a time when we shall ask nothing from 
the day but to live, nor from the future but 
that we may not deteriorate. We do not 
agree with him that there is a day approach- 
ing when the lower races will predominate 
in the world and the higher races will have 
lost their noblest elements. But after all, it 
matters little what view we take of the future 
if, in our practice, we but do as he preaches, 
and face resolutely whatever fate may have 
in store. We, ourselves, are not certain that 
progress is assured ; we only assert that it 
may be assured if we but live wise, brave, 
and upright lives. We do not know whether 



224 NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER 

the future has in store for us calm or unrest. 
We cannot know beyond peradventure 
whether we can prevent the higher races 
from losing their nobler traits and from be- 
ing overwhelmed by the lower races. On 
the whole, we think that the greatest vic- 
tories are yet to be won, the greatest deeds 
yet to be done, and that there are yet in 
store for our peoples and for the causes that 
we uphold grander triumphs than have ever 
yet been scored. But be this as it may, we 
gladly agree that the one plain duty of every 
man is to face the future as he faces the 
present, regardless of what it may have in 
store for him, and, turning toward the light 
as he sees the light, to play his part man- 
fully, as a man among men. 



VII 
*' SOCIAL EVOLUTION"^ 

MR. KIDD'S Social Evolution is a sug- 
gestive, but a very crude book; for 
the writer is burdened by a certain mixture 
of dogmatism and superficiality, which 
makes him content to accept half truths and 
insist that they are whole truths. Neverthe- 
less, though the book appeals chiefly to 
minds of the kind which are uncharitably 
described as '' half-baked/' Mr. Kidd does 
suggest certain lines of thought which are 
worth following — though rarely to his con- 
clusions. 

He deserves credit for appreciating what 
he calls '' the outlook." He sketches graph- 
ically, and with power, the problems which 
now loom up for settlement before all of us 
* North American Review, Jtily, 1895. 
225 



226 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

who dwell in Western lands ; and he por- 
trays the varying attitudes of interest, 
alarm, and hope with which the thinkers 
and workers of the day regard these prob- 
lems. He points out that the problems 
which now face us are by no means parallel 
to those that were solved by our forefathers 
one, two, or three centuries ago. The great 
political revolutions seem to be about com- 
plete and the time of the great social revo- 
lutions has arrived. We are all peering 
eagerly into the future to try to forecast the 
action of the great dumb forces set in opera- 
tion by the stupendous industrial revolution 
which has taken place during the present 
century. We do not know what to make of 
the vast displacements of population, the 
expansion of the towns, the unrest and dis- 
content of the masses^ and the uneasiness of 
those who are devoted to the present order 
of things. 

Mr. Kidd sees these problems, but he 
gropes blindly when he tries to forecast 
their solution. He sees that the progress of 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 227 

mankind in past ages can only have been 
made under and in accordance with certain 
biological laws, and that these laws con- 
tinue to work in human society at the 
present day. He realizes the all-importance 
of the laws which govern the reproduction 
of mankind from generation to generation, 
precisely as they govern the reproduction 
of the lower animals, and which, therefore, 
largely govern his progress. But he makes 
a cardinal mistake in treating of this kind 
of progress. He states with the utmost 
positiveness that, left to himself, man has 
not the slightest innate tendency to make 
any onward progress whatever, and that 
if the conditions of life allowed each man to 
follow his own inclinations the average of 
one generation would always tend to sink 
below the average of the preceding. This 
is one of the sweeping generalizations of 
which Mr Kidd is fond, and which mar so 
much of his work. He evidently finds great 
difficulty in stating a general law with the 
proper reservations and with the proper 



228 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

moderation of phrase ; and so he enunciates 
as truths statements which contain a truth, 
but which also contain a falsehood. What 
he here says is undoubtedly true of the 
world, taken as a whole. It is in all prob- 
ability entirely false of the highest sections 
of society. At any rate, there are numerous 
instances where the law he states does not 
work ; and of course a single instance over- 
sets a sweeping declaration of such a kind. 
There can be but little quarrel with what 
Mr. Kidd says as to the record of the world 
being a record of ceaseless progress on the 
one hand, and ceaseless stress and compe- 
tition on the other; although even here his 
statement is too broad, and his terms are 
used carelessly. When he speaks of prog- 
ress being ceaseless, he evidently means by 
progress simply change, so that as he vises 
the word it must be understood to mean 
progress backward as well as forward. As 
a matter of fact, in many forms of life and 
for long ages there is absolutely no progress 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 229 

whatever and no change, the forms remain- 
ing practically stationary. 

Mr. Kidd further points out that the first 
necessity for every successful form engaged 
in this struggle is the capacity for repro- 
duction beyond the limits for which the con- 
ditions of life comfortably provide, so that 
competition and selection must not only al- 
ways accompany progress, but must pre- 
vail in every form of life which is not ac- 
tually retrograding. As already said, he 
accepts without reservation the proposition 
that if all the individuals of every genera- 
tion in any species were allowed to propa- 
gate their kind equally, the average of each 
generation would tend to fall below the 
preceding. 

From this position he draws as a corol- 
lary, that the wider the limits of selection, the 
keener the rivalry and the more rigid the 
selection, just so much greater will be the 
progress ; while for any progress at all there 
must be some rivalry in selection, so that 



230 ^ SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

every progressive form must lead a life of 
continual strain and stress as it travels its 
upward path. This again is true in a 
measure, but it is not true as broadly as Mr, 
Kidd has stated it. The rivalry of natural 
selection is but one of the features in prog- 
ress. Other things being equal, the species 
where this rivalry is keenest will make most 
progress ; but then *' other things " never 
are equal. In actual life those species make 
most progress which are farthest removed 
from the point where the limits of selection 
are very wide, the selection itself very rigid, 
and the rivalry very keen. Of course the 
selection is most rigid where the fecundity 
of the animal is greatest ; but it is precisely 
the forms which have most fecundity that 
have made least progress. Some time in the 
remote past the guinea pig and the dog had 
a common ancestor. The fecundity of the 
guinea pig is much greater than that of 
the dog. Of a given number of guinea 
pigs born, a much smaller proportion are 
able to survive in the keen rivalry, so that 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 231 

the limits of selection are wider, and the 
selection itself more rigid; nevertheless the 
progress made by the progenitors of the 
dog since eocene days has been much more 
marked and rapid than the progress made 
by the progenitors of the guinea pig in the 
same time. 

Moreover, in speaking of the rise that has 
come through the stress of competition in 
our modern societies, and of the keenness 
of this stress in the societies that have gone 
fastest, Mr. Kidd overlooks certain very 
curious features in human society. In the 
first place he speaks as though the stress 
under which nations make progress was 
primarily the stress produced by multiplica- 
tion beyond the limits of subsistence. This, 
of course, would mean that in progressive 
societies the number of births and the num- 
ber of deaths would both be at a maximum, 
for it is where the births and deaths are 
largest that the struggle for life is keenest. 
If, as Mr. Kidd's hypothesis assumes, prog- 
ress was most marked where the struggle 



232 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

for life was keenest, the European peoples 
standing highest in the scale would be the 
South Italians, the Polish Jews, and the 
people who live in the congested districts of 
Ireland. As a matter of fact, however, these 
are precisely the peoples who have made 
least progress when compared with the 
dominant strains among, for instance, the 
English or Germans. So far is Mr. Kidd's 
proposition from being true that, when 
studied in the light of the facts, it is difficult 
to refrain from calling it the reverse of the 
truth. The race existing under conditions 
which make the competition for bare ex- 
istence keenest, never progresses as fast as 
the race which exists under less stringent 
conditions. There must undoubtedly be a 
certain amount of competition, a certain 
amount of stress and strain, but it is equally 
undoubted that if this competition becomes 
too severe the race goes down and not up; 
and it is further true that the race existing 
under the severest stress as regards this 
competition often fails to go ahead as fast 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 233 

even in population as does the race where 
the competition is less severe. No matter how 
large the number of births may be, a race 
cannot increase if the number of deaths also 
grows at an accelerating rate. 

To increase greatly a race must be pro- 
lific, and there is no curse so great as the 
curse of barrenness, whether for a nation 
or an individual. When a people gets to the 
position even now occupied by the mass of 
the French and by sections of the New Eng- 
landers, where the death rate surpasses the 
birth rate, then that race is not only fated to 
extinction but it deserves extinction. When 
the capacity and desire for fatherhood and 
motherhood is lost the race goes down, and 
should go down; and we need to have the 
plainest kind of plain speaking addressed to 
those individuals who fear to bring children 
into the world. But while this is all true, it 
remains equally true that immoderate in- 
crease in no way furthers the development 
of a race, and does not always help its in- 
crease even in numbers. The English- 



234 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

speaking peoples during the past two cen- 
turies and a half have increased faster than 
any others, yet there have been many other 
peoples whose birth rate during the same 
period has stood higher. 

Yet, again, Mr. Kidd, in speaking of the 
stress of the conditions of progress in our 
modem societies fails to see that most of the 
stress to which he refers does not have any- 
thing to do with increased difficulty in ob- 
taining a living, or with the propagation of 
the race. The great prizes are battled for 
among the men who wage no war whatever 
for mere subsistence, while the fight for 
mere subsistence is keenest among precisely 
the classes which contribute very little indeed 
to the progress of the race. The generals 
and admirals, the poets, philosophers, his- 
torians and musicians, the statesmen and 
judges, the law-makers and law-givers, 
the men of arts and of letters, the great 
captains of war and of industry — all 
these come from the classes where the 
struggle for the bare means of subsist- 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 235 

ence is least severe, and where the rate 
of increase is relatively smaller than in 
the classes below. In civilized societies the 
rivalry of natural selection works against 
progress. Progress is made in spite of it, 
for progress results not from the crowding 
out of the lower classes by the upper, but on 
the contrary from the steady rise of the 
lower classes to the level of the upper, as 
the latter tend to vanish, or at most barely 
hold their own. In progressive societies it 
is often the least fit who survive; but, on 
the other hand, they and their children often 
tend to grow more fit. 

The mere statement of these facts is suffi- 
cient to show not only how incorrect are 
many of Mr. Kidd's premises and conclu- 
sions, but also how unwarranted are some of 
the fears which he expresses for the future. It 
is plain that the societies and sections of 
societies where the individual's happiness is 
on the whole highest, and where progress is 
most real and valuable, are precisely these 
where the grinding competition and the 



236 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

struggle for mere existence is least severe. 
Undoubtedly in every progressive society 
there must be a certain sacrifice of individ- 
uals, so that there must be a certain propor- 
tion of failures in every generation; but 
the actual facts of life prove beyond shadow 
of doubt that the extent of this sacrifice has 
nothing to do with the rapidity or worth of 
the progress. The nations that make most 
progress may do so at the expense of ten or 
fifteen individuals out of a hundred, whereas 
the nations that make least progress, or even 
go backwards, may sacrifice almost every 
man out of the hundred. 

This last statement is in itself partly an 
answer to the position taken by Mr. Kidd, 
that there is for the individual no '' rational 
sanction " for the conditions of progress. 
In a progressive community, where the con- 
ditions provide for the happiness of four- 
fifths or nine-tenths of the people, there is 
undoubtedly a rational sanction for progress 
both for the community at large and for the 
great bulk of its members; and if these 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 237 

members are on the whole vigorous and 
intelHgent, the attitude of the smaller frac- 
tion who have failed will be a matter of little 
consequence. In such a community the con- 
flict between the interests of the individual 
and the organism of which he is a part, 
upon which Mr. Kidd lays so much em- 
phasis, is at a minimum. The stress is se- 
verest, the misery and suffering greatest, 
among precisely the communities which 
have made least progress — among the Bush- 
men, Australian black fellows, and root-dig- 
ger Indians, for instance. 

Moreover, Mr. Kidd does not define what 
he means by " rational sanction." Indeed 
one of his great troubles throughout is his 
failure to make proper definitions, and the 
extreme looseness with which he often uses 
the definitions he does make. Apparently 
by " rational " he means merely selfish, and 
proceeds upon the assumption that " rea- 
son " must always dictate to every man to 
do that which will give him the greatest 
amount of individual gratification at the mo- 



238 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

ment, no matter what the cost may be to 
others or to the community at large. This 
is not so. Side by side with the selfish de- 
velopment in life there has been almost from 
the beginning a certain amount of unselfish 
development too; and in the evolution of 
humanity the unselfish side has, on the 
whole, tended steadily to increase at the ex- 
pense of the selfish, notably in the progres- 
sive communities about whose future devel- 
opment Mr. Kidd is so ill at ease. A more 
supreme instance of unselfishness than is 
afforded by motherhood cannot be im- 
agined ; and when Mr. Kidd implies, as he 
does very clearly, that there is no rational 
sanction for the unselfishness of mother- 
hood, for the unselfishness of duty, or loy- 
alty, he merely misuses the word rational. 
When a creature has reached a certain stage 
of development it will cause the female more 
pain to see her offspring starve than to work 
for it, and she then has a very rational rea- 
son for so working. When humanity has 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 239 

reached a certain stage it will cause the in- 
dividual more pain, a greater sense of deg- 
radation and shame and misery, to steal, to 
murder, or to lie, than to work hard and 
suffer discomfort. When man has reached 
this stage he has a very rational sanction 
for being truthful and honest. It might 
also parenthetically be stated that when he 
has reached this stage he has a tendency to 
relieve the sufferings of others, and he has 
for this course the excellent rational sanc- 
tion that it makes him more uncomfortable 
to see misery unrelieved than it does to deny 
himself a little in order to relieve it. 

However, we can cordially agree with 
Mr. Kidd's proposition that many of the 
social plans advanced by would-be reform- 
ers in the interest of oppressed individuals 
are entirely destructive of all growth and of 
all progress in society. Certain cults, not 
only Christian, but also Buddhistic and 
Brahminic, tend to develop an altruism 
which is as " supra-natural " as Mr. Kidd 



240 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

seemingly desires religion to be; for it 
really is without foundation in reason, and 
therefore to be condemned. 

Mr. Kidd repeats again and again that 
the scientific development of the nineteenth 
century confronts us with the fact that the 
interests of the social organism and of the 
individual are, and must remain, antago- 
nistic, and the latter predominant, and that 
there can never be found any sanction in 
individual reason for individual good con- 
duct in societies where the conditions of 
progress prevail. From what has been said 
above it is evident that this statement is en- 
tirely without basis, and therefore that the 
whole scheme of mystic and highly irra- 
tional philosophy which he founds upon it 
at once falls to the ground. There is no 
such necessary antagonism as that which he 
alleges. On the contrary, in the most truly 
progressive societies, even now, for the 
great mass of the individuals composing 
them the interests of the social organism 
and of the individual are largely identical 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 241 

instead of antagonistic ; and even where this 
is not true, there is a sanction of individual 
reason, if we use the word reason properly, 
for conduct on the part of the individual 
which is subordinate to the welfare of the 
general society. 

We can measure the truth of his state- 
ments by applying them, not to great so- 
cieties in the abstract, but to small social or- 
ganisms in the concrete. Take for instance 
the life of a regiment or the organization of 
a police department or fire department. 
The first duty of a regiment is to fight, and 
fighting means the death and disabling of a 
large proportion of the men in the regiment. 
The case against the identity of interests be- 
tween the individual and the organism, as 
put by Mr. Kidd, would be far stronger in 
a regiment than in any ordinary civilized 
society of the day. Yet as a matter of fact 
we know that in the great multitude of 
regiments there is much more subordina- 
tion of the individual to the organism than 
is the case in any civilized state taken as a 



242 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

whole. Moreover, this subordination is 
greatest in precisely those regiments where 
the average individual is best off, because it 
is greatest in those regiments where the in- 
dividual feels that high, stern pride in his 
own endurance and suffering, and in the 
great name of the organism of which he 
forms a part, that in itself yields one of the 
loftiest of all human pleasures. If Mr. Kidd 
means anything when he says that there is 
no rational sanction for progress he must 
also mean that there is no rational sanction 
for a soldier not flinching from the enemy 
when he can do so unobserved, for a sentinel 
not leaving his post, for an officer not de- 
serting to the enemy. Yet when he says 
this he utters what is a mere jugglery on 
words. In the process of evolution men and 
societies have often reached such a stage 
that the best type of soldier or citizen feels 
infinitely more shame and misery from neg- 
lect of duty, from cowardice or dishonesty, 
from selfish abandonment of the interests of 
the organism of which he is part, than can 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 243 

be offset by the gratification of any of his 
desires. This, be it also observed, often 
takes place, entirely independent of any re- 
ligious considerations. The habit of useful 
self-sacrifice may be developed by civiliza- 
tion in a great society as well as by military 
training in a regiment. The habit of use- 
less self-sacrifice may also, unfortunately, 
be developed ; and those who practice it are 
but one degree less noxious than the indi- 
viduals who sacrifice good people to bad. 

The religious element in our development 
is that on which Mr. Kidd most strongly 
dwells, entitling it " the central feature of 
human history." A very startling feature 
of his treatment is that in religious matters 
he seemingly sets no value on the difference 
between truth and falsehood, for he groups 
all religions together. In a would-be teacher 
of ethics such an attitude warrants severe 
rebuke ; for it is essentially dishonest and 
immoral. Throughout his book he treats 
all religious beliefs from the same stand- 
point, as if they were all substantially sim- 



244 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

ilar and substantially of the same value; 
whereas it is, of course, a mere truism to 
say that most of them are mutually destruc- 
tive. Not only has he no idea of differen- 
tiating the true from the false, but he seems 
not to understand that the truth of a par- 
ticular belief is of any moment. Thus he 
says, in speaking of the future survival of 
religious beliefs in general, that the most 
notable result of the scientific revolution be- 
gun by Darwin must be " to establish them 
on a foundation as broad, deep, and lasting 
as any the theologians ever dreamed of." If 
this sentence means anything it means that 
all these religious beliefs will be established 
on the same foundation. It hardly seems 
necessary to point out that this cannot be the 
fact. If the God of the Christians be in 
very truth the one God, and if the belief in 
Him be established, as Christians believe it 
will, then the foundation for the religious 
belief in Mumbo Jumbo can be neither 
broad, deep, nor lasting. In the same way 
the beliefs in Mohammed and Buddha are 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 245 

mutually exclusive, and the various forms 
of ancestor worship and fetichism cannot all 
be established on a permanent basis, as they 
would be according to Mr. Kidd's theory. 

Again, when Mr. Kidd rebukes science 
for its failure to approach religion in a 
scientific spirit he shows that he fails to 
grasp the full bearing of the subject which 
he is considering. This failure conies in 
part from the very large, not to say loose, 
way in which he uses the words " science " 
and " religion." There are many sciences 
and many religions, and there are many dif- 
ferent kinds of men who profess the one or 
advocate the other. Where the intolerant 
professors of a given religious belief en- 
deavor by any form of persecution to pre- 
vent scientific men of any kind from seeking 
to find out and establish the truth, then it is 
quite idle to blame these scientific men for 
attacking with heat and acerbity the relig- 
ious belief which prompts such persecution. 
The exigencies of a life and death struggle 
unfit a man for the coldness of a mere scien- 



246 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

tific inquiry. Even the most enthusiastic 
naturaHst, if attacked by a man-eating 
shark, would be much more interested in 
evading or repelhng the attack than in de- 
termining the precise specific relations of 
the shark. A less important but amusing 
feature of his argument is that he speaks as 
if he himself had made an entirely new dis- 
covery when he learned of the important 
part played in man's history by his religious 
beliefs. But Mr. Kidd surely cannot mean 
this. He must be aware that all the great 
historians have given their full importance 
to such religious movements as the birth 
and growth of Christianity, the Reforma- 
tion, the growth of Islamism, and the like. 
Mr. Kidd is quite right in insisting upon the 
importance of the part played by religious 
beliefs, but he has fallen into a vast error if 
he fails to understand that the great major- 
ity of the historical and sociological writers 
have given proper weight to this impor- 
tance. 

Mr. Kidd's greatest failing is his ten- 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 247 

dency to use words in false senses. He 
uses " reason " in the false sense *' selfish." 
He then, in a spirit of mental tautology, as- 
sumes that reason must be necessarily purely 
selfish and brutal. He assumes that the 
man who risks his life to save a friend, the 
woman who watches over a sick child, and 
the soldier who dies at his post, are unrea- 
sonable, and that the more their reason is 
developed the less likely they will be to act 
in these ways. The mere statement of the 
assertion in such a form is sufficient to show 
its nonsense to any one who will take the 
pains to think whether the people who ordi- 
narily perform such feats of self-sacrifice 
and self-denial are people of brutish minds 
or of fair intelligence. 

If none of the ethical qualities are devel- 
oped at the same time with a man's reason, 
then he may become a peculiarly noxious 
kind of wild beast; but this is not in the 
least a necessity of the development of his 
reason. It would be just as wise to say that 
it was a necessity of the development of 



248 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

his bodily strength. Undoubtedly the man 
with reason who is selfish and unscrupulous 
will, because of his added power, behave 
even worse than the man without reason 
who is selfish and unscrupulous; but the 
same is true of the man of vast bodily 
strength. He has power to do greater harm 
to himself and to others; but, because of 
this, to speak of bodily strength or of reason 
as in itself "profoundly anti-social and anti- 
evolutionary " is foolishness. Mr. Kidd, as 
so often, is misled by a confusion of names 
for which he is himself responsible. The 
growth of rationalism, unaccompanied by 
any growth in ethics or morality, works 
badly. The society in which such a growth 
takes place will die out, and ought to die 
out. But this does not imply that other 
communities quite as intelligent may not 
also be deeply moral and be able to take 
firm root in the world. 

Mr. Kidd's definitions of "supra-natural" 
and " ultra-rational " sanctions, the defini- 
tions upon which he insists so strongly and 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 249 

at such length, would apply quite as well to 
every crazy superstition of the most brutal 
savage as to the teachings of the New Tes- 
tament. The trouble with his argument is 
that, when he insists upon the importance of 
this ultra-rational sanction, defining it as 
loosely as he does, he insists upon too much. 
He apparently denies that men can come to 
a certain state at which it will be rational for 
them to do right even to their own hurt. It 
is perfectly possible to build up a civilization 
which, by its surroundings and by its inher- 
itances, working through long ages, shall 
make the bulk of the men and women de- 
velop such characteristics of unselfishnesSj 
as well as of wisdom, that it will be the ra- 
tional thing for them as individuals to act in 
accordance with the highest dictates of 
honor and courage and morality. If the in- 
tellectual development of such a civilized 
community goes on at an equal pace with 
the ethical, it will persistently war against 
the individuals in whom the spirit of selfish- 
ness, which apparently Mr. Kidd considers 



250 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

the only rational spirit, shows itself strongly. 
It will weed out these individuals and for- 
bid them propagating, and therefore will 
steadily tend to produce a society in which 
the rational sanction for progress shall be 
identical in the individual and the State. 
This ideal has never yet been reached, but 
long steps have been taken towards reach- 
ing it ; and in most progressive civilizations 
it is reached to the extent that the sanction 
for progress is the same not only for the 
State but for each one of the bulk of the in- 
dividuals composing it. When this ceases 
to be the case progress itself will generally 
cease and the community ultimately disap- 
pear. 

Mr. Kidd, having treated of religion in a 
preliminary way, and with much mystic 
vagueness, then attempts to describe the 
functions of religious belief in the evolution 
of society. He has already given definitions 
of religion quoted from different authors, 
and he now proceeds to give his own defini- 
tion. But first he again insists upon his fa- 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 251 

vorite theory, that there can be no rational 
basis for individual good conduct in society, 
using the word rational, according to his 
usual habit, as a synonym of selfish ; 
and then asserts that there can be no such 
thing as a rational religion. Apparently all 
that Mr. Kidd demands on this point is that 
it shall be what he calls ultra-rational, a 
word which he prefers to irrational. In 
other words he casts aside as irrelevant all 
discussion as to a creed's truth. 

Mr. Kidd then defines religion as being 
" a form of belief providing an ultra-ra- 
tional sanction for that large class of con- 
duct in the individual where his interests 
and the interests of the social organism are 
antagonistic, and by which the former arc 
rendered subordinate to the latter in the 
general interest of the evolution which the 
race is undergoing," and says that we have 
here the principle at the base of ail religions. 
Of course this is simply not true. All those 
religions which busy themselves exclusively 
with the future life, and which even Mr. 



252 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

Kidd could hardly deny to be religious, do 
not have this principle at their base at all. 
They have nothing to do with the general 
interests of the evolution which the race is 
undergoing on this earth. They have to do 
only with the soul of the individual in the 
future life. They are not concerned with 
this world, they are concerned with the 
world to come. All religions, and all forms 
of religions, in which the principle of as- 
ceticism receives any marked development 
are positively antagonistic to the develop- 
ment of the social organism. They are 
against its interests. They do not tend in 
the least to subordinate the interests of the 
individual to the interests of the organism 
'' in the general interest of the evolution 
which the race is undergoing." A religion 
like that of the Shakers means the almost 
immediate extinction of the organism in 
which it develops. Such a religion dis- 
tinctly subordinates the interests of the or- 
ganism to the interests of the individual. 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 253 

The same is equally true of many of the 
more ascetic developments of Christianity 
and Islam. There is strong probability 
that there was a Celtic population in Iceland 
before the arrival of the Norsemen, but 
these Celts belonged to the Culdee sect of 
Christians. They were anchorites, and 
professed a creed which completely subor- 
dinated the development of the race on this 
earth to the well-being of the individual in 
the next. In consequence they died out and 
left no successors. There are creeds, such 
as most of the present day creeds of Chris- 
tianity, both Protestant and Catholic, which 
do very noble work for the race because they 
teach its individuals to subordinate their 
own interests to the interests of mankind; 
but it is idle to say this of every form of re- 
ligious belief. 

It is equally idle to pretend that this prin- 
ciple, which Mr. Kidd says lies at the base 
of all religions, does not also lie at the bas^^ 
of many forms of ethical belief which could 



254 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

hardly be called religious. His definition of 
religion could just as appropriately be used 
to define some forms of altruism or human- 
itarianism, while it does not define religion 
at all, if we use the word religion in the way 
in which it generally is used. If Mr. Kidd 
should write a book about horses, and 
should define a horse as a striped equine ani- 
mal found wild in South Africa, his defini- 
tion would apply to certain members of the 
horse family, but would not apply to that 
animal which we ordinarily mean when we 
talk of a horse; and, moreover, it would 
still be sufficiently loose to include two or 
three entirely distinct species. This is pre- 
cisely the trouble with Mr. Kidd's definition 
of religion. It does not define religion at all 
as the word is ordinarily used, and while 
it does apply to certain religious beliefs, it 
also applies quite as well to certain non-re- 
ligious beliefs. We must, therefore, recol- 
lect that throughout Mr. Kidd's argument 
on behalf of the part that religion plays he 
does not mean what is generally understood 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 255 

by religion, but the special form or forms 
which he here defines. 

Undoubtedly, in the race for life, that 
group of beings will tend ultimately to sur- 
vive in which the general feeling of the 
members, whether due to humanitarianism, 
to altrusim, or to some form of religious be- 
lief proper, is such that the average individ- 
ual has an unselfish — what Mr. Kidd would 
call an ultra-rational — tendency to work for 
the ultimate benefit of the community as a 
whole. Mr. Kidd's argument is so loose 
that it may be construed as meaning that, in 
the evolution of society, irrational supersti- 
tions grow up from time to time, affect large 
bodies of the human race in their course of 
development, and then die away; and that 
this succession of evanescent religious be- 
liefs will continue for a very long time to 
come, perhaps as long as the human race 
exists. He may further mean that, except 
for this belief in a long succession of lies, 
humanity could not go forward. His words, 
I repeat, are sufficiently involved to make it 



256 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

possible that he means this, but, if so, his 
book can hardly be taken as a satisfactory 
defence of religion. 

If there is justification for any given re- 
ligion, and justification for the acceptance of 
supernatural authority as regards this re- 
ligion, then there can be no justification for 
the acceptance of all religions, good and bad 
alike. There can, at the outside, be a justi- 
fication for but one or two. Mr. Kidd's 
grouping of all religions together is offen- 
sive to every earnest believer. Moreover, in 
his anxiety to insist only on the irrational 
side of religion, he naturally tends to exalt 
precisely those forms of superstition which 
are most repugnant to reasoning beings 
with moral instincts, and which are most 
heartily condemned by behevers in the 
loftiest rehgions. He apparently condemns 
Lecky for what Lecky says of that species 
of unpleasant and noxious anchorite best 
typified by St. Simeon Stylites and the other 
pillar hermits. He corrects Lecky for his 
estimate of this ideal of the fourth century, 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION «57 

and says that instead of being condemned 
it should be praised, as affording striking 
evidence and example of the vigor of the 
immature social forces at work. This is 
not true. The type of anchorite of which 
Mr. Lecky speaks with such just condemna- 
tion flourished most rankly in Christian Af- 
rica and Asia Minor, the very countries 
where Christianity was so speedily over- 
thrown by Islam. It was not an example 
of the vigor of the immature social forces 
at work; on the contrary, it was a proof 
that those social forces were rotten and had 
lost their vigor. Where an anchorite of the 
type Lecky describes, and Mr. Kidd im- 
pliedly commends, was accepted as the true 
type of the church, and set the tone for re- 
ligious thought, the church was corrupt, and 
was unable to make any effective defence 
against the scarcely baser form of supersti- 
tion which received its development in Is- 
lamism. As a matter of fact, asceticism of 
this kind had very little in common with the 
really vigorous and growing part of Eu- 



258 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

ropean Christianity, even at that time. Such 
asceticism is far more closely related to the 
practices of some loathsome Mohammedan 
dervish than to any creed which has prop- 
erly developed from the pure and lofty 
teachings of the Four Gospels. St. Simeon 
Stylites is more nearly kin to a Hindoo 
fakir than to Phillips Brooks or Archbishop 
Ireland. 

Mr. Kidd deserves praise for insisting as 
he does upon the great importance of the 
development of humanitarian feelings and 
of the ethical element in humanity during 
the past few centuries, when compared with 
the mere material development. He is, of 
course, entirely right in laying the utmost 
stress upon the enormous part taken by 
Christianity in the growth of Western civ- 
ilization. He would do well to remember, 
however, that there are other elements than 
that of merely ceremonial Christianity at 
work, and that such ceremonial Christianity 
in other races produces quite different re- 
sults, as he will see at a glance, if he will 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 259 

recall that Abyssinia and Hayti are Chris- 
tian countries. 

In short, whatever Mr. Kidd says in ref- 
erence to religion must be understood as 
being strictly limited by his own improper 
terminology. If we should accept the words 
religion and religious belief in their ordi- 
nary meaning, and should then accept as 
true what he states^ we should apparently 
have to conclude that progress depended 
largely upon the fervor of the religious 
spirit, without regard to whether the re- 
ligion itself was false or true. If such 
were the fact, progress would be most rapid 
in a country like Morocco, where the re- 
ligious spirit is very strong indeed, far 
stronger than in any enlightened Christian 
country, but where, in reality, the religious 
development has largely crushed out the 
ethical and moral development, so that the 
country has gone steadily backward. A 
little philosophic study would convince Mr. 
Kidd that while the ethical and moral de- 
velopment of a nation may, in the case of 



26o SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

certain religions, be based on those relig- 
ions and develop with them and on the lines 
laid down by them, yet that in other coun- 
tries where they develop at all they have to 
develop right in the teeth of the dominant 
religious beliefs, while in yet others they 
may develop entirely independent of them. 
If he doubts this let him examine the con- 
dition of the Soudan under the Mahdi, 
where what he calls the ultra-rational and 
supra-natural sanctions were accepted 
without question, and governed the lives 
of the people to the exclusion alike of 
reason and morality. He will hardly assert 
that the Soudan is more progressive than 
say Scotland or Minnesota, where there is 
less of the spirit which he calls religious 
and which old-fashioned folk would call 
superstitious. 

Mr. Kidd's position in reference to the 
central feature of his argument is radically 
false; but he handles some of his other 
themes very well. He shows clearly in his 
excellent chapter on modern socialism that 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 261 

a state of retrogression must ensue if all in- 
centives to strife and competition are with- 
drawn. He does not show quite as clearly 
as he should that over-competition and too 
severe stress make the race deteriorate in- 
stead of improving; but he does show that 
there must be some competition, that there 
must be some strife. He makes it clear also 
that the true function of the State, as it in- 
terferes in social life, should be to make the 
chances of competition more even, not to 
abolish them. We wish the best men; and 
though we pity the man that falls or lags 
behind in the race, we do not on that ac- 
count crown him with the victor's wreath. 
We insist that the race shall be run on 
fairer terms than before because we remove 
all handicaps. We thus tend to make it 
more than ever a test of the real merits of 
the victor, and this means that the victor 
must strive heart and soul for success. Mr. 
Kidd's attitude in describing socialism is 
excellent. He sympathizes with the wrongs 
which the socialistic reformer seeks to re- 



262 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 

dress, but he insists that these wrongs must 
not be redressed, as the sociaHsts would 
have them, at the cost of the welfare of 
mankind. 

Mr. Kidd also sees that the movement 
for political equality has nearly come to 
an end, for its purpose has been nearly 
achieved. To it must now succeed a move- 
ment to bring all people into the rivalry of 
life on equal conditions of social oppor- 
tunity. This is a very important point, and 
he deserves the utmost credit for bringing 
it out. It is the great central feature in the 
development of our time, and Mr. Kidd 
has seen it so clearly and presented it so 
forcibly that we cannot but regret that he 
should be so befogged in other portions of 
his argument. 

Mr. Kidd has our cordial sympathy when 
he lays stress on the fact that our evolution 
cannot be called primarily intellectual. Of 
course there must be an intellectual evo- 
lution, too, and Mr. Kidd perhaps fails in 
not making this sufficiently plain. A per- 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION 263 

fectly stupid race can never rise to a very- 
high plane; the negro, for instance, has 
been kept down as much by lack of intel- 
lectual development as by anything else; 
but the prime factor in the preservation of 
a race is its power to attain a high degree 
of social efficiency. Love of order, ability 
to fight well and breed well, capacity to 
subordinate the interests of the individual 
to the interests of the community, these 
and similar rather humdrum qualities go to 
make up the sum of social efficiency. The 
race that has them is sure to overturn the 
race whose members have brilliant intel- 
lects, but who are cold and selfish and timid, 
who do not breed well or fight well, and 
who are not capable of disinterested love of 
the community. In other words, character 
is far more important than intellect to the 
race as to the individual. We need intel- 
lect, and there is no reason why we should 
not have it together with character; but if 
we must choose between the two we choose 
character without a moment's hesitation. 



vni 

THE LAW OF CIVILIZATION 
AND DECAY " 

FEW more melancholy books have been 
written than Mr. Brooks Adams's Lazv 
of Civilization and Decay. It is a marvel of 
compressed statement. In a volume of less 
than four hundred pages Mr. Adams singles 
out some of the vital factors in the growth 
and evolution of civiHzed life during the last 
two thousand years; and so brilliant is his 
discussion of these factors as to give, though 
but a glimpse, yet one of the most vivid 
glimpses ever given, of some of the most im- 
portant features in the world-life of Chris- 
tendom. Of some of the features only ; for a 
fundamentally defective point in Mr. Adams's 
brilliant book is his failure to present certain 
* The Forum, January, 1897. 
264 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 265 

phases of the hfe of the nations, — phases 
which are just as important as those which 
he discusses with such vigorous abiHty. Fur- 
thermore, he disregards not a few facts which 
would throw Hght on others, the weight of 
which he fully recognizes. Both these short- 
comings are very natural in a writer who 
possesses an entirely original point of view, 
who is the first man to see clearly certain 
things that to his predecessors have been 
nebulous, and who writes with a fervent in- 
tensity of conviction, even in his bitterest 
cynicism, such as we are apt to associate 
rather with the prophet and reformer than 
with a historian to whom prophet and re- 
former alike appeal no more than do their 
antitypes. It is a rare thing for a historian 
to make a distinct contribution to the phi- 
losophy of history ; and this Mr. Adams has 
done. Naturally enough, he, like other men 
who break new ground, tends here and there 
to draw a devious furrow. 

The book Is replete with vivid writing, 
and with sentences and paragraphs which 



266 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY. 

stand out in the memory as marvels in the 
art of presenting the vital features of a sub- 
ject with a few master-strokes. The story 
of the Crusades, the outline of the English 
conquest of India, and the short tale of the 
rise of the house of Rothschild, are master- 
pieces. Nowhere else is it possible to find 
in the same compass any description of the 
Crusades so profound in its appreciation of 
the motives behind them, so startling in the 
vigor with which the chief actors, and the 
chief events, are portrayed. Indeed, one is 
almost tempted to say that it is in the des- 
cription of the Crusades that Mr. Adams is 
at his best. He is dealing with a giant move- 
ment of humanity; and he grasps not only 
the colossal outward manifestations, but also 
the spirit itself, and, above all, the strange 
and sinister changes which that spirit under- 
went. His mere description of the Baronies 
set up by the Crusaders in the conquered 
Holy Land, with their loose feudal govern- 
ment, brings them before the reader's eyes 
as few volumes specially devoted to the sub- 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 267 

ject could. It is difficult to write of a fortress 
and make a pen-picture which will always 
stay in the mind ; yet this is what Mr. Adams 
has done in dealing with the grim religious 
castles, terrible in size and power, which were 
built by the Knights of the Temple and the 
Hospital as bulwarks against Saracen 
might. He is not only a scholar of much 
research, but a student of art, who is so much 
more than a mere student as to be thrilled 
and possessed by what he studies. He shows, 
with a beauty and vigor of style not unbe- 
coming his subject, how profoundly the art 
of Europe was affected by the Crusades. It 
is not every one who can write with equal 
interest of sacred architecture and military 
engineering, who can appreciate alike the 
marvels of Gothic cathedrals and the frown- 
ing strength of feudal fortresses, and who 
furthermore can trace their inter-relation. 

The story of the taking of Constantinople 
by the Crusaders who followed the lead of 
the blind Doge Dandolo is told with an al- 
most brutal ruthlessness quite befitting the 



268 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

deed itself. Nowhere else in the book is Mr. 
Adams happier in his insistence upon the con- 
flict between what he calls the economic and 
the imaginative spirits. The incident sets 
w^ell with his favorite theory of the inevita- 
ble triumph of the economic over the imag- 
inative man, as societies grow centralized, 
and the no less inevitable fossilization and 
ruin of the body politic which this very tri- 
umph itself ultimately entails. The history 
of the English conquest of India is only less 
vividly told. Incidentally, it may be men- 
tioned that one of Mr. Adams's many merits 
is his contemptuous refusal to be misled by 
modern criticism of Macaulay. He sees Ma- 
caulay's greatness as a historian, and his es- 
sential truthfulness on many of the very 
points where he has been most sharply criti- 
cised. 

Mr. Adams's book, however, is far more 
than a mere succession of brilliant episodes. 
He fully sees that the value of facts lies in 
their relation to one another; and from the 
facts as he sees them he deduces certain laws 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 26g 

with more than a Thucydidean indifference 
as to his own individual approval or disap- 
proval of the development. The life of na- 
tions, like any other form of life, is but one 
manifestation of energy; and Mr. Adams's 
decidedly gloomy philosophy of life may be 
gathered from the fact that he places fear 
and greed as the two forms of energy which 
stand conspicuously predominant ; fear in tlie 
earlier, and greed in the later, stages of evo- 
lution from barbarism to civilization. Civi- 
lization itself he regards merely as the his- 
tory of the movement from a condition of 
physical distribution to one of physical con- 
centration. During the earlier stages of this 
movement the imaginative man — the man 
who stands in fear of a priesthood — is, in his 
opinion, the representative type, while with 
him, and almost equally typical, stand the 
soldier and the artist. As consolidation ad- 
vances, the economic man — the man of in- 
dustry, trade, and capital — tends to supplant 
the emotional and artistic types of manhood, 
and finally himself develops along two lines, 



270 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

— " the usurer in his most formidable aspect, 
and the peasant whose nervous system is best 
adapted to thrive on scanty nutriment." 
These two very unattractive types are, in his 
behef, the inevitable final products of all civi- 
lization, as civilization has hitherto devel- 
oped; and when they have once been pro- 
duced there follows either a stationary pe- 
riod, during which the whole body politic 
gradually ossifies and atrophies, or else a pe- 
riod of utter disintegration. 

This is not a pleasant theory ; it is in many 
respects an entirely false theory; but never- 
theless there is in it a very ugly element of 
truth. One does not have to accept either all 
Mr. Adams's theories or all his facts in order 
to recognize more than one disagreeable re- 
semblance between the world as it is to-day, 
and the Roman world under the Empire, or 
the Greek world under the successors of 
Alexander. Where he errs is in his failure 
to appreciate the fundamental differences 
which utterly destroy any real parallelism 
between the two sets of cases. Indeed, his 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 271 

zeal in championing his theories leads him at 
times into positions which are seen at a 
glance to be untenable. 

Probably Mr. Adams's account of the 
English Reformation, and of Henry VIII. 
and his instruments, is far nearer the truth 
than Froude's. But his view of the evils 
upon which the reformers as a whole waged 
war, and of the spirit which lay behind the 
real leaders and spurred them on, is cer- 
tainly less accurate than the view given by 
Froude in his Erasmus and Council of Trent. 
It can be partly corrected by the study of a 
much less readable book — Mr. Henry C. 
Lea's work on The Inquisition. Yet Mr. 
Adams's description of the English Refor- 
mation is very powerful, and has in it a vein 
of bitter truth; though on the whole it is 
perhaps not so well done as his account of the 
suppression of the Templars in France. If 
he can be said to have any heroes, the Tem- 
plars must certainly be numbered among 
them. 

He is at his best in describing the imagi- 



272 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

native man, and especially the imaginative 
man whose energy manifests itself in the 
profession of arms. His description of the 
tremendous change which passed over Eu- 
rope during the centuries which saw, what is 
commonly called, the decay of faith is es- 
pecially noteworthy. In no other history are 
there to be found two sentences which por- 
tray more vividly the reasons for the tri- 
umph of the great Pope Hildebrand over the 
Emperor Henry, than these: 

" To Henry's soldiers the world was a vast 
space peopled by those fantastic beings which 
are still seen on Gothic towers. These 
demons obeyed the monk of Rome, and his 
army, melting from the Emperor under a 
nameless horror, left him helpless." 

His account of the contrast between the 
relations of Philip Augustus and of Philip 
the Fair with the Church is dramatic in its 
intensity. To Mr. Adams, Philip the Fair, 
even more than Henry VHL, is the incarna- 
tion of the economic spirit in its conflict with 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 27S 

the Church ; and he makes him an even more 
repulsive, though perhaps an abler, man than 
Henry. In this he is probably quite right. 
His account of the hounding down of Boni- 
face, and the cruel destruction of the Tem- 
plars, is as stirring as it is truthful; but he 
certainly pushes his theory to an altogether 
impossible extreme when he states that the 
moneyed class, the bourgeoisie, was already 
the dominant force in France. The heroes 
of Froissart still lay in the ftiture; and for 
centuries to come the burgher was to be out- 
weighed by king, priest, and noble. The 
economic man, the man of trade and money, 
was, at that time, in no sense dominant. 

That there is grave reason for some of Mr. 
Adams's melancholy forebodings, no serious 
student of the times, no sociologist or re- 
former^ and no practical politician who is in- 
terested in more than momentary success, 
will deny. A foolish optimist is only less 
noxious than an utter pessimist ; and the pre- 
requisite for any effort, whether hopeful or 
hopeless, to better our conditions is an ac- 



274 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

curate knowledge of what these conditions 
are. There is no use in bhnding ourselves to 
certain of the tendencies and results of our 
high-pressure civilization. Some very omi- 
nous facts have become more and more ap- 
parent during the present century, in which 
the social movement of the white race has 
gone on with such unexampled and ever-ac- 
celerating rapidity. The rich have undoubt- 
edly grown richer ; and, while the most care- 
ful students are inclined to answer with an 
emphatic negative the proposition that the 
poor have grown poorer, it is nevertheless 
certain that there has been a large absolute, 
though not relative, increase of poverty, and 
that the very poor tend to huddle in im- 
mense masses in the cities. Even though 
these masses are, relatively to the rest of the 
population, smaller than they formerly were, 
they constitute a standing menace, not merely 
to our prosperity, but to our existence. The 
improvement in the means of communication, 
moreover, has so far immensely increased the 
tendency of the urban population to grow at 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 275 

the expense of the rural; and philosophers 
have usually been inclined to regard the ulti- 
mate safety of a nation as resting upon its peas- 
antry. The improvement in machinery, the 
very perfection of scientific processes, cause 
great, even though temporary, suffering to 
unskilled laborers. Moreover, there is a cer- 
tain softness of fibre in civilized nations 
which, if it were to prove progressive, might 
mean the development of a cultured and re- 
fined people quite unable to hold its own in 
those conflicts through which alone any 
great race can ultimately march to victory. 
There is also a tendency to become fixed, 
and to lose flexibility. Most ominous of all, 
there has become evident, during the last two 
generations, a very pronounced tendency 
among the most highly civilized races, and 
among the most highly civilized portions of 
all races, to lose the power of multiplying 
and even to decrease ; so much so as to make 
the fears of the disciples of Malthus a cen- 
tury ago seem rather absurd to the dweller 
in France or New England to-day. 



276 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

Mr. Adams does not believe that any in- 
dividual or group of individuals can influ- 
ence the destiny of a race for good or for evil. 
All of us admit that it is very hard by indi- 
vidual effort thus to make any alteration in 
destiny; but we do not think it impossible; 
and Mr. Adams will have performed a great 
service if he succeeds in fixing the eyes of the 
men who ought to know thoroughly the 
problems set us to solve, upon the essential 
features of these problems. I do not think 
his diagnosis of the disease is in all respects 
accurate. I believe there is an immense 
amount of healthy tissue as to the existence 
of which he is blind; but there is disease, 
and it is serious enough to warrant very care- 
ful examination. 

However, Mr. Adams is certainly in er- 
ror in putting the immense importance he 
does upon the question of the expansion or 
contraction of the currency. There is no 
doubt whatever that a nation is profoundly 
affected by the character of its currency ; but 
there seems to be equally little doubt that the 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 277 

currency is only one, and by no means the 
most important, among a hundred causes 
which profoundly affect it. The United 
States has been on a gold basis, and on a 
silver basis ; it has been on a paper basis, and 
on a basis of what might be called the scraps 
and odds and ends of the currencies of a 
dozen other nations; but it has kept on de- 
veloping along the same lines no matter what 
its currency has been. If a change of cur- 
rency were so enacted as to amount to dis- 
honesty, that is, to the repudiation of debts, 
it would be a very bad thing morally ; or, if 
a change took place in a manner that would 
temporarily reduce the purchasing power of 
the wage-earner, it would be a very bad 
thing materially ; but the current of the na- 
tional life would not be wholly diverted or 
arrested, it would merely be checked, even by 
such a radical change. The forces that m.ost 
profoundly shape the course of a nation's life 
lie far deeper than the mere use of gold or of 
silver, the mere question of the appreciation 
or depreciation of one metal when compared 



278 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

with the other, or when compared with com- 
modities generahy. 

Mr. Adams unconsciously shows this in 
his first and extremely interesting chapter 
on the Romans. In one part of this chapter 
he seems to ascribe the ruin of the Roman 
Empire to the contraction of the currency, 
saying, *' with contraction came that fall of 
prices which first ruined, then enslaved, and 
finally exterminated the native rural popula- 
tion of Italy." This he attributes to the 
growth of the economic or capitalistic spirit. 
As he puts it, " the stronger type extermi- 
nated the weaker, the money-lender killed out 
the husbandman, the soldiers vanished, and 
the farms on which they once flourished were 
left desolate." 

But, curiously enough, Mr. Adams him- 
self shows that all this really occurred during 
the two centuries, or thereabouts, extending 
from the end of the second Punic war 
through the reign of the first of the Roman 
emperors ; and this was a period of currency 
expansion, not of currency contraction. 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 279 

Moreover, it was emphatically a period when 
the military and not the economic type was 
supreme. The great Romans of the first and 
second centuries before Christ were soldiers, 
not merchants or usurers, and they could only 
be said to possess the economic instinct inci- 
dentally, in so far as it is possessed by ev- 
ery man of the military type who seizes the 
goods accumulated by the man of the eco- 
nomic type. It was during these centuries, 
when the military type was supreme, and 
when prices were rising, that the ruin, the en- 
slavement and the extermination of the old 
rural population of Italy began. It was dur- 
ing these centuries that the husbandmen left 
the soil and became the mob of Rome, clam- 
oring for free bread and the games of the 
amphitheatre. It was toward the close of 
this period that the Roman army became an 
army no longer of Roman citizens, but of 
barbarians trained in the Roman manner; 
it was toward the close of this period that 
celibacy became so crying an evil as to invoke 
the vain action of the legislature, and that 



2«o CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

the Roman race lost the power of se'f-per- 
petuation. What happened in the succeed- 
ing centuries, — the period of the contraction 
of the currency and the rise of prices, — was 
merely the completion of the ruin which had 
already been practically accomplished. 

These facts seem to show clearly that the 
question of the currency had really little or 
nothing to do with the decay of the Roman 
fibre. This decay began under one set of 
currency conditions, and continued un- 
changed when these conditions became pre- 
cisely reversed. An infinitely more impor- 
tant cause, as Mr. Adams himself shows, was 
the immense damage done to the Italian hus- 
bandman by the importation of Asiatic and 
African slaves; which was in all probability 
the chief of the causes that conspired to ruin 
him. He was forced into competition with 
races of lower vitality; races tenacious of 
life, who possessed a very low standard of 
living, and who furnished to the great slave- 
owner his cheap labor. Mr. Adams shows 
that the husbandman was affected, not only 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 281 

by the importation of vast droves of slaves 
to compete with him in Italy, but by the com- 
petition with low-class labor in Egypt and 
elsewhere. These very points, if developed 
with Mr. Adams's skill, would have enabled 
him to show in a very strikuig manner the 
radical contrast between the present political 
and social life of civilized states, and the po- 
litical and social life of Rome during what 
he calls the capitalistic or closing period. At 
present, the minute that the democracy be- 
comes convinced that the workman and the 
peasant are suffering from competiticn with 
cheap labor, whether this cheap labor take the 
form of alien immigration, or of the impor- 
tation of goods manufactured abroad by low- 
class working-men, or of commodities pro- 
duced by convicts, it nt once puts a stop to 
the competition. We keep out t!ic Chinese, 
very wisely; we have put an end to tlie ri- 
valry of convict contract labor with free la- 
bor; we are able to protect ourselves, when- 
ever necessary, by heavy import duties, 
against the effect of too cheap labor in any 



282 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

foreign country ; and, finally, in the civil war, 
we utterly destroyed the system of slavery, 
which really was threatening the life of the 
free working-man in a way in which it can- 
not possibly be threatened by any conceivable 
development of the " capitalistic " spirit. 

Mr. Adams possesses a very intimate 
knowledge of finance, and there are many of 
his discussions on this subject into which 
only an expert would be competent to enter. 
Nevertheless, on certain financial and eco- 
nomic questions, touching matters open to 
discussion by the man of merely ordinary 
knowledge, his terminology is decidedly 
vague. This is especially true when he 
speaks of " the producer." Now the pro- 
ducer, as portrayed by the Populist stump 
orator or writer of political and economic 
pamphlets, is a being with whom we be- 
came quite intimate during the recent cam- 
paign; but we have found it difficult to un- 
derstand at all definitely who this "producer" 
actually is. According to one school of Pop- 
ulistic thinkers the farmer is the producer; 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 283 

but according to another and more radical 
school this is not so, unless the farmer works 
with his hands and not his head, this school 
limiting the application of the term " pro- 
ducer " to the working-man who does the 
immediate manual work of production. On 
the other hand those who speak with scien- 
tific precision must necessarily class as pro- 
ducers all men whose work results directly 
or indirectly in production. Under this defi- 
nition, inventors and men who improve the 
methods of transportation, like railway pres- 
idents, and men who enable other producers 
to w^ork, such as bankers who loan money 
wisely, are all themselves to be classed as 
producers, and often indeed as producers of 
the most effective kind. 

The great mass of the population consists 
of producers; and in consequence the ma- 
jority of the sales by producers are sales to 
other producers. It requires one set of pro- 
ducers to make a market for any other set of 
producers ; and in consequence the rise or 
fall of prices is a good or a bad thing for 



^84 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

different bodies of producers according to the 
different circumstances of each case. Mr. 
Adams says that the period from the middle 
of the twelfth to the middle of the thirteenth 
centuries was an interval of " almost unpar- 
alleled prosperity," which he apparently as- 
cribes to the expansion of the currency, 
with which, he says, '' went a rise in prices, 
all producers grew rich, and for more than 
two generations the strain of competition was 
so relaxed that the different classes of the 
population preyed upon each other less sav- 
agely than they are wont to do in less happy 
times." It is not exactly clear how a rise 
in the prices both of what one producer sells 
another, and of what he in return buys from 
that other, can somehow make both of them 
rich, and relax the strain of competition. 
Certainly in the present century, competition 
has been just as severe in times of high 
prices, and some of the periods of greatest 
prosperity have coincided with the periods of 
very low prices. There is reason to believe 
that low prices are ultimately of great bene- 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 285 

fit to the wage-earners. A rise in prices 
generally injures them. Moreover, in the 
century of which Mr. Adams speaks, the real 
non-producers were the great territorial 
feudal lords and the kings and clergymen; 
and these were then supreme. It was the 
period of the ferocious Albigensian crusades. 
It is true that it ushered in a rather worse 
period, — that of the struggle between Eng- 
land and France, with its attendant peasant 
wars and Jacqueries, and huge bands of ma- 
rauding free-companies. But the alteration 
for the worse was due to a fresh outbreak 
of " imaginative " spirit ; and the first period 
was full of recurring plagues and famines, 
besides the ordinary unrest, murder, oppres- 
sion, pillage, and general corruption. Mr. 
Adams says that the different classes of the 
population during that happy time " preyed 
upon each other less savagely " than at other 
times. All that need be said in answer is that 
there is not now a civilized community, under 
no matter what stress of capitalistic compe- 
tion, in which the different classes prey upon 



286 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

one another with one-tenth the savagery they 
then showed ; or in which famine and disease, 
even leaving v/ar out of account, come any- 
where near causing so much misery to poor 
people, and above all to the wage-earners, or 
working-men, the under strata and base of 
the producing classes. 

From many of the statements in Mr. 
Adams's very interesting concluding chapter 
I should equally differ; and yet this chapter 
is one which is not merely interesting but 
soul-stirring, and it contains much with 
which most of us would heartily agree. 
Through the cold impartiality with which he 
strives to work merely as a recorder of facts, 
there break now and then flashes of pent-up 
wrath and vehement scorn for all that is 
mean and petty in a purely materialistic, 
purely capitalistic, civilization. With his 
scorn of what is ignoble and base in our 
development, his impatient contempt of the 
deification of the stock-market, the trading- 
counter, and the factory, all generous souls 
must agree. When we see prominent men 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 287 

deprecating the assertion of national honor 
because it '* has a bad effect upon business," 
or because it " impairs the value of securi- 
ties " ; when we see men seriously accepting 
Mr. Edward Atkinson's pleasant theory that 
patriotism is of no consequence when com- 
pared with the price of cotton sheeting or 
the capacity to undersell our competitors in 
foreign markets, it is no wonder that a man 
who has in him the stuff of ancestors who 
helped to found our Government, and helped 
to bring it safely through the Civil War 
should think blackly of the future. But Mr. 
Adams should remember that there always 
have been men of this merely huckstering 
type, or of other types not much higher. It 
is not a nice thing that Mr. Eliot, the presi- 
dent of one of the greatest educational in- 
stitutions of the land, should reflect dis- 
credit upon the educated men of the country 
by his attitude on the Venezuela affair, car- 
rying his desertion of American principles 
so far as to find himself left in the lurch by 
the very English statesman whose cause he 



288 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

was championing; but Mr. Adams by turn- 
ing to the " History " of the administration 
of Madison, by his brother, Henry Adams, 
would find that Mr. EHot had plenty of in- 
tellectual ancestors among the '* blue lights " 
federalists of that day. Timothy Pickering 
showed the same eager desire to stand by an- 
other country to the hurt of his own coun- 
try's honor, and Timothy Pickering was a 
United States Senator whose conduct was 
far more reprehensible than that of any pri- 
vate individual could be. We have advanced, 
not retrograded, since 1812. 

This applies also to what Mr. Adams says 
of the fall of the soldier and the rise of the 
usurer. He quite overstates his case in as- 
serting that in Europe the soldier has lost 
his importance since 1871, and that the ad- 
ministration of society since then has fallen 
into the hands of the '' economic man," 
thereby making a change " more radical than 
any that happened at Rome or even at By- 
zantium." In the first place, a period of a 
quarter of a century is altogether too short 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 2^^ 

to admit of such a generalization. In the 
next place, the facts do not support this par- 
ticular generalization. The Germans are 
quite as military in type as ever they were, 
and very much more so than they were at any 
period during the two centuries preceding 
Bismarck and Moltke. Nor is it true to say 
that " the ruler of the French people has 
passed for the first time from the martial to 
the moneyed type." Louis XV. and Louis 
Philippe can hardly be held to belong to any 
recognized martial type; and the reason of 
the comparative sinking of the military man 
in France is due not in the least to the rise 
of his economic fellow-countryman, but to 
the rise of the other military man in Ger- 
many. Mr. Adams says that since the cap- 
itulation of Paris the soldier has tended to 
sink more and more, until he merely receives 
his orders from financiers (which term when 
used by Mr. Adams includes all business and 
working-men) with his salary, without be- 
ing allowed a voice, even in the questions 
which involve peace and war. Now this is 



290 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

precisely the position which the soldier has 
occupied for two centuries among EngHsh- 
speaking races; and it is during these very 
centuries that the EngHsh-speaking race has 
produced its greatest soldiers. Marlborough 
and Wellington, Nelson and Farragut, 
Grant and Lee, exactly fill Mr. Adams's defi- 
nition of the position into which soldiers have 
"sunk"; and the United States has just 
elected as President, as it so frequently has 
done before, a man who owes his place in 
politics in large part to his having done gal- 
lant service as a soldier, and who is in no 
sense a representative of the moneyed type. 
Again, Mr. Adams gloomily remarks that 
" producers have become the subjects of the 
possessors of hoarded wealth," and that 
among capitalists the money-lenders form an 
aristocracy, while debtors are helpless and 
the servants of the creditors. All this is 
really quite unworthy of Mr. Adams, or of 
anyone above the intellectual level of Mr. 
Bryan, Mr. Henry George, or Mr. Bellamy. 
Any man who has had the slightest practical 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 291 

knowledge of legislation, whether as Con- 
gressman or as State legislator, knows that 
nowadays laws are passed much more often 
with a view to benefiting the debtors than 
the creditors; always excepting that very 
large portion of the creditor class which in- 
cludes the wage-earners. " Producers " — 
whoever they may be — are not the subjects of 
" hoarded wealth," nor of anyone nor any- 
thing else. Capital is not absolute ; and it is 
idle to compare the position of the capitalist 
nowadays with his position when his work- 
men were slaves and the law-makers were 
his creatures. The money-lender, by whom 
I suppose Mr. Adams means the banker, is 
not an aristocrat as compared to other capi- 
talists, — at any rate in the United States. 
The merchant, the manufacturer, the rail- 
road man, stand just as the banker does; 
and bankers vary among themselves just as 
any other business men do. They do not 
form a '' class " at all ; anyone who wishes 
to can go into the business ; men fail and 
succeed in it just as in other businesses. As 



292 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

for the debtors being powerless, if Mr. 
Adams knows any persons who have lent 
money in Kansas or similar States they will 
speedily enlighten him on this subject, and 
will give him an exact idea of the extent to 
which the debtor is the servant of the cred- 
itor. In those States the creditor — and es- 
pecially the Eastern money-lender or '' gold- 
bug " — is the man who has lost all his money. 
Mr. Adams can readily find this out by the 
simple endeavor to persuade some " money- 
lender," or other " Wall Street shark " to 
go into the business of lending money on 
Far- Western farm property. The money- 
lender in the most civiHzed portions of the 
United States always loses if the debtor is 
loser, or if the debtor is dishonest. Of 
course there are " sharpers " among bankers, 
as there are among producers. Moreover, 
the private, as distinguished from the cor- 
porate, debtor borrows for comparatively 
short periods, so that he is practically not at 
all affected by an appreciating currency ; the 
rise is much too small to count in the case of 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 293 

the individual, though it may count in the 
long-term bonds of a nation or corporation. 
The wage of the working-man rises, while 
interest, which is the wage of the capitalist, 
sinks. 

Mr. Adams's study of the rise of the usurer 
in India and the ruin of the martial races 
is ver}^ interesting; but it has not the slight- 
est bearing upon anything which is now 
happening in Western civilization. The 
debtor, in America at least, is amply able 
to take care of his own interests. Our ex- 
perience shows conclusively that the creditors 
only prosper when the debtors prosper, and 
the danger lies less in the accumulation of 
debts, than in their repudiation. Among us 
the communities which repudiate their debts, 
which inveigh loudest against their cred- 
itors, and which offer the poorest field for the 
operations of the honest banker (whom they 
likewise always call ''money-lender,") are 
precisely those which are least prosperous 
and least self-respecting. There are, of 
course, individuals here and there who are 



294 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

unable to cope with the money-lender, and 
even sections of the country where this is 
true; but this only means that a weak or 
thriftless man can be robbed by a sharp 
money-lender just as he can be robbed by 
the sharp producer from whom he buys or to 
whom he sells. There is, in certain points, 
a very evident incompatibility of interest be- 
tween the farmer who wishes to sell his prod- 
uct at a high rate, and the working-man 
who wishes to buy that product at a low rate ; 
but the success of the capitalist, and especially 
of the banker, is conditioned upon the pros- 
perity of both working-man and farmer. 

When Mr. Adams speaks of the change 
in the relations of women and men he touches 
on the vital weakness of our present civili- 
zation. If we are, in truth, tending toward 
a point where the race will cease to be able 
to perpetuate itself, our civilization is of 
course a failure. No quality in a race atones 
for the failure to produce an abundance of 
healthy children. The problem upon which 
Mr. Adams here touches is the most serious 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 295 

of all problems, for it lies at the root of, and 
indeed itself is, national life. But it is hard 
to accept seriously Mr. Adams's plea that 
" martial " men loved their wives more than 
" economic " men do, and showed their love 
by buying them. Of course the only reason 
why a woman was bought in early times was 
because she was looked upon like any other 
chattel ; she was " loved " more than she is 
now only as a negro was " loved " more by 
the negro-trader in i860 than at present. 
The worship of women during the Middle 
Ages was, in its practical effects, worship of 
a very queer kind. The " economic man " 
of the present day is beyond comparison 
gentler and more tender and more loving to 
women than the " emotional man " of the 
Middle Ages. 

Mr. Adams closes with some really fine 
paragraphs, of which the general purport is, 
that the advent of the capitalist and the eco- 
nomic man, and especially the advent of the 
usurer, mark a condition of consolidation 
which means the beginning of utter decay, 



296 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

so that our society, as a result of this accel- 
erated movement away from emotionalism 
and towards capitalism, is now in a condi- 
tion like that of the society of the later Ro- 
man Empire. He forgets, however, that 
there are plenty of modern states which have 
entirely escaped the general accelerated 
movement of our time. Spain on the one 
hand, and Russia on the other, though alike 
in nothing else, are alike in being entirely 
outside the current of modern capitalistic de- 
velopment. Spain never suffered from capi- 
talists. She exterminated the economic man 
in the interest of the emotional and martial 
man. As a result she has sunk to a condi- 
tion just above that of Morocco — another 
state, by the way, which still clings to the 
martial and emotional type, and is entirely 
free from the vices of capitalistic develop- 
ment, and from the presence of the usurer, 
save as the usurer existed in the days of 
Isaac of York. Soldiers and artists have 
sunk lower in Spain than elsewhere, although 
they have had no competition from the eco- 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 297 

nomic man. Russia is in an entirely differ- 
ent position. Russia is eminently emotional, 
and her capitalists are of the most archaic 
type; but it is difficult to say exactly what 
Russia has done for art, or in what respect 
her soldiers are superior to other soldiers; 
and certainly the life of the lower classes in 
Russia is on the average far less happy than 
the life of the working-man and farmer in 
any English-speaking country. Evidently, 
as Spain and Russia show, national decay, or 
non-development may have little to do with 
economic progress. 

Mr. Adams has shown well that the prog- 
ress of civilization and centralization has de- 
pended largely upon the growing mastery of 
the attack over the defence ; but when he says 
that the martial type necessarily decays as 
civilization progresses, he goes beyond what 
he can prove. The economic man in Eng- 
land, Holland, and the United States has for 
several centuries proved a much better 
fighter than the martial emotionalist of the 
Spanish countries. It is Spain which is now 



298 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

decaying; not the nations with capitaHsts. 
The causes which make Russia formidable 
are connected with the extent of her terri- 
tory and her population, for she has cer- 
tainly failed so far to produce fighting 
men at all superior to the fighting men of 
the economic civilizations. In a pent-up ter- 
ritory she would rise less rapidly, and fall 
more rapidly, than they would ; and her free- 
dom from centralization and capitalization 
would not help her. Spain, which is wholly 
untouched by modern economic growth, suf- 
fers far more than any English-speaking 
country from maladies like those of Rome in 
its decadence ; and Rome did not decay from 
the same causes which affect modern Amer- 
ica or Europe; while Russia owes her im- 
munity from a few of the evils that affect 
the rest of us, to causes unconnected with 
her backwardness in civilization, and more- 
over has worse evils of her own to contend 
with. The English-speaking man has so far 
out-built, out-fought, and out-administered 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 299 

the Russian; and he is as far as the poles 
away from the Roman of the later Empire. 
Moreover, instead of the mercenary or 
paid police growing in relative strength, as 
Mr. Adams says, it has everywhere shrunk 
during the last fifty years, when compared 
with the mass of armed farmers and Vv^age- 
earners who make up a modern army. The 
capitalist can no longer, as in ages past, 
count upon the soldiers as being of his party ; 
he can only count upon them when they are 
convinced that in fighting his battle they are 
fighting their own; although under modern 
industrial conditions this is generally the 
case. Again, Mr. Adams is in error in his 
facts, when he thinks that producers have 
prospered in the silver-using, as compared 
with the gold-using, countries. The wage- 
earner and small farmer of the United States, 
or even of Europe, stand waist high above 
their brothers in Mexico and the other com- 
munities that use only silver. The prosperity 
of the wage-earning class is more important 



300 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

to the state than the prosperity of any other 
class in the community, for it numbers within 
its ranks two-thirds of the people of the com- 
munity. The fact that modern society rests 
upon the wage-earner, whereas ancient so- 
ciety rested upon the slave, is of such trans- 
cendent importance as to forbid any exact 
comparison between the two, save by way 
of contrast. 

While there is in modern times a decrease 
in emotional religion, there is an immense in- 
crease in practical morality. There is a de- 
crease of the martial type found among sav- 
ages and the people of the Middle Ages, ex- 
cept as it still survives in the slums of great 
cities ; but there remains a martial type 
infinitely more efficient than any that pre- 
ceded it. There are great branches of in- 
dustry which call forth in those that follow 
them more hardihood, manliness, and 
courage than any industry of ancient times. 
The immense masses of men connected with 
the railroads are continually called upon to 
exercise qualities of mind and body such as 



CIVILIZATION AND DECAY Soi 

in antiquity no trade and no handicraft de- 
manded. There are^ it is true, influences at 
work to shake the vitaHty, courage, and 
manhness of the race; but there are other 
influences which tell in exactly the opposite 
direction; and, whatever may come in the 
future, hitherto the last set of influences have 
been strongest. As yet, while men are more 
gentle and more honest than before, it can- 
not be said that they are less brave ; and they 
are certainly more efficient as fighters. If 
our population decreases ; if we lose the virile, 
manly qualities, and sink into a nation of 
mere hucksters, putting gain over national 
honor, and subordinating everything to mere 
ease of life; then we shall indeed reach a 
condition worse than that of the ancient civ- 
ilizations in the years of their decay. But 
at present no comparison could be less apt 
than that of Byzantium, or Rome in its later 
years, with a great modern state where the 
thronging millions who make up the bulk of 
the population are v/age-earners, who them- 
selves decide their own destinies ; a state 



302 CIVILIZATION AND DECAY 

which is able in time of need to put into the 
field armies, composed exclusively of its own 
citizens, more numerous than any which the 
world has ever before seen, and with a record 
of fighting in the immediate past with which 
there is nothing in the annals of antiquity 
to compare. 



THE END 



stories ot College %itc 

THE UNIVERSITY SERIES 

I. Harvard Stories.— Sketches of the Undergradu- 
ate. ByW. K. Post. Fifteenth edition. 1 2% paper, 
50 cts. ; cloth $1.00 

•■ Mr. Post's manner of telling these tales is in its way inimi- 
table. The atmosphere of the book, in its relation to the localities 
where the scenes are laid is well-nigh perfect. The different 
types of undergraduates are clearly drawn, and there is a dramatic 
element in most of the stories that is very welcome. It goes 
without saying that Harvard men will find keenpleasure in this 
volume, while for those who desire a faithful picture of certain 
phases of American student life it offers a noteworthy fund of 
instruction and enteita'mmeat."— Literary News. 

II. Yale Yarns.— By J. S. Wood. Fifth edition. 

lUustrated. 12° ^ . $1.00 

•' This delightful little book will be read with intense interest 

by all Yale men."— iV^w Haven Eve. Leader. 

" The Yale atmosphere is wonderfully reproduced in some 
of the sketches, and very realistic pictures are drawn, particularly 
of the old 'fence' and the 'old brick xo\s .^ '''' —Boston Times. 
"College days are regarded by most educated men as the 
cream of their lives, sweet with excellent flavor. They are 
not dull and tame even, to the most devoted student, and this is a 
volume filled with the pure cream of such existence, and many 'a 
college joke to cure the dumps ' is given. It is a bright, realisdc 
picture of college life, told in an easy .conversational, or descrip- 
tive style, and cannot fail to genuinely interest the reader who has 
the slightest appreciation of humor. The volume is illustrated 
and is just the book for an idle or a lonely hour."— i^^J Angeles 
Times. 

The Babe, B.A. The Uneventful History of a 
Young Gentleman in Cambridge University. By 
Edward F. Benson, author of " Dodo," etc. 
Illustrated. 12° $1.00 

" The story tells of the every-day life of a young man called 
the Babe. . . . Cleverly written and one of the best this 
author has -wnn^nV— Leader, New Haven. 

A Princetonian. A Story of Undergraduate Life at 

the College of New Jersey. By James Barnes. 

Illustrated. 12° $i-25 

" Mr. Barnes is a loyal son of the College of New Jersey, with 
the cleverness and zeal to write this story of undergraduate iife in 
the college, following his successful use of the pen in earlier books, 
Ji'or King and Country, Midshipman Farragtit, etc. . . . 
There is enough of fiction in the story to give true liveliness to 
Its fact. . . . Mr. Barnes's literary style is humorous and 
•vivid." — Boston Transcript. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



HUDSON LIBRARY 

Bi-monthly. Entered as second-class matter. 
i6°. Per number, paper . • $ -S© 
Yearly subscription . . . 3.00 

1. Love and Shawl-Straps. By A. L. Noble. 

2. Miss Hurd : An Enigma. By Anna Katharine 

Green. 

3. How Thankful was Bewitched. By J. K. 

Hosmer. 

4. A Woman of Impulse. By J. H. McCarthy. 

5. The Countess Bettina. By Clinton Ross. 

6. Her Majesty. By E. K. Tompkins. 

7. God Forsaken. By F. Breton, 

8. An Island Princess. By T. Gift. 

9. Elizabeth's Pretenders. By H. Aide. 

10. At Tuxter's. By G. B. Burgin. 

11. Cherryiield Hall. By F. H. Balfour. 

12. The Crime of the Century. By R. Ottolengui. 

13. The Things that Matter. By F. Gribble. 

14. The Heart of Life. By W. H. Mallock. 

15. The Broken Ring. By E. K. Tompkins. 

16. Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason. By 

M. D. Post. 

17. That Affair Next Door. By Anna Katharine 

Green. 

18. In the Crucible. By Grace D. Litchfield. 

19. Eyes Like the Sea. By M. Jokai. 

20. An Uncrowned King. By S. C. Grier. 

21. The Professor's Dilemma. By A. L. Noble. 

22. The Ways of Life. By Mrs. Olipliant. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York & London 



HUDSON LIBRARY 

(Continued) 

23. The Man of the Family. By Christian Reid. 

24. Margot. By Sidney Pickering. 

25. The Fall of the Sparrow. By M. C. Balfour. 

26. Elementary Jane. By Richard Pryce. 

27. The Man of Last Resort. By M. D. Post. 

28. Stephen Whapshare. By Emma Brooke. 

29. Lost Man's Lane. By Anna Katharine Green. 

30. Wheat in the Ear. By Alien. 

31. As Having Nothing. By Hester C. Oakley. 

32. The Chase of an Heiress. By Christian Reid. 

33. Final Proof. By R. Ottolengui, 

34. The Wheel of God. By George Egerton. 

35. John Marmaduke. By S. H. Church, 

36. Hannah Thurston. By Bayard Taylor. 

37. Yale Yarns. By J. S. Wood. 

38. The Untold Half. By Alien. 

39. Rosalba. By Olive P. Rayner (Grant Allen). 

40. Dr. Berkeley's Discovery. By R. Slee and 

C. A. Pratt. 

41. Aboard the " American Duchess." By Headon 

Hill. 

42. The Priest's Marriage. By Nora Vynne. 

43. The Things that Count. By E. K. Tompkins. 

44. The Leavenworth Case. By Anna Katharine 

Green. 

45. The Secret of the Crater. By Duffield Osborne. 

46. Lone Pine. By R. B, Townshend. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York & London 



ETECTIVE STORIES 

By Anna Katharine Green 



THE LEAVENWORTH CASE 

A Lawyer's Story. looth thousand. Hudson Library, 
No. 44. 12°; paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.25. 
" She has proved herself as well able to write an interesting story 
of mysterious crime as any man living." — London Acadetny. 

THAT AFFAIR NEXT DOOR 

38th thousand. Hudson Library, No. 17. 12°; paper, 

50 cents; cloth, $1.00. 
" The success of ' That Affair Next Door,' Anna Katharine 
Green's latest novel, is something almost unprecedented. Of all 
the tales since ' The Leavenworth Case,' this has had the greatest 
vogue which is saying considerable, for Mrs. Rohlfs enjoys the 
distinction of being one of the most widely read authors in this 
country. 'That Affair Next Door,', with its startling ingenuity, 
its sustained interest and its wonderful plot, shows that the 
author's hand has not lost its cunning, but has gained as the 
years go by." — Bzcffalo Inquirer. 

LOST MAN'S LANE 

24th thousand. Hudson Library, No. 29. 12°; paper, 

50 cents; cloth, $1.00. 
" Miss Green works up a cause celebre with a fenility of device 
and ingenuity of treatment hardly second to Wilkie Collins or 
Edgar Allan Poe."— 7:^^ Outlook. 

AGATHA WEBB 

28th thousand. 12°; cloth only, $1.25. 
"This is a cleverly concocted detective story, and sustains the 
well-earned reputation of the writer. . . . The curiosity of 
the reader is excited and sustained to the close.'''— Brooklyn 
Citizen. 

Other detective stories by this author, issued in paper at 50 
cents; in cloth at $1.00, are: 

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE 

THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES 

HAND AND RING 

THE MILL MYSTERY 

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS 

CYNTHIA WAKEHAM'S MONEY 

MARKED "PERSONAL" 

MISS HURD 
DR. IZARD 

Q. P. Putnam's Sons t:§S)or'' 



Two Powerful Novels 



CHILDREN OF THE MIST 

By Eden Phillpotts, author of "Down Dart- 
moor Way," etc. j^th impression. 8°, $1.50 

" Knowing nothing of the writer or his works, I was simply 
astonished at the beauty and power of this novel. But true as it is 
to life and place, full of deep interest and rare humor, and vivid 
descriptions, there seemed to be risk of its passing unheeded in 
the crowd and rush and ruck of fiction. . . . Literature has 
been enriched with a wholesome, genial, and noble tale, the read- 
ing of which is a pleasure in store for many." — R. D, Blackmore^ 
the aiithor of Lor7ia Doom. 

" If I were to name the best novel I have read I should un- 
hesitatingly put down 'Children of the Mist.' It has a touch of 
Hardy; it has a touch of Blackmore; and yet it is fresh, and origi- 
nal, and powerful." — Edward Fulle7-y Literary Editor 0/ the 
Providence Journal. 

"One of the most consistently and thoroughly worked-out 
novels that have appeared for a long time past. It is one of the 
truest studies of human nature."— Z<£'«^£'« Post, 

"A work of amazing power which plainly indicates a master 
hand." — Boston Herald. 



SONS OF THE MORNING 

By Eden Phillpotts, author of " Children of the 
Mist," etc. 8° $1.50 

Special Autograph Edition. Limited to 1000 
copies signed by the author. With portrait. 
8° nett $1.50 

Little need be said concerning this author's virile work since 
the far-reaching success of " Children of the Mist." This is the 
first novel he has written since the publication of that powerful 
work. The same strength of imagination, couched in the same 
vivid English, is characteristic of this new story, which has, per- 
haps, more of maturity about it. Mr. Phillpotts has again chosen 
Dartmoor, that corner of England which he knows and loves so 
well, for the scene of his novel. 



Q. P. Putnam's Sons T^^^""^ 



IRew f iction* 



Agatha Webb. 

By Anna Katharine Green, author of *' The 

Leavenworth Case," " That Affair Next Door," 

etc. 12°, cloth, $1.25. 

" This is a cleverly concocted detective story, 

and sustains the well-earned reputation of the writer. 

. . . The curiosity of the reader is excited and 

sustained to the close." — Brooklyn Citizen. 

Children of the Mist. 

By Eden Phillpotts, author of " Down Dart- 
moor Way," " Lying Prophets," etc. 8°, $1.50. 
" A work of amazing power which plainly in- 
dicates a master hand." — Boston Herald. 

Miss Cayiey's Adventures. 

By Grant Allen, author of "Flowers and 
Their Pedigrees," etc. With 80 illustrations. 
12°, $1.50. 
"A quaint and sparkling story — bright and 

entertaining from beginning to end." — Chicago 

Tim es-Hera Id. 

Dr. Berkeley's Dsscovery. 

By Richard Slee and Cornelia Atwood 
Pratt. Hudson Library No. 40. 12°, paper, 
50 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 
Dr. Berkeley's discovery is a liquid which will 
"develop" certain memory cells of the human 
brain, as a photographer's chemicals "develop" a 
sensitised plate. Upon each tiny cell appears a 
picture, visible by the microscope. By " develop- 
ing" the memory centre of a brain, Dr. Berkeley 
can trace the most secret history of the being that 
owned the brain ; can see the things the being saw, 
in sequence, from infancy to death. With this 
foundation, the authors of " Dr. Berkeley's Discov- 
ery " have told a thrilling, dramatic story. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York & London 



iisstoric Towns of New Eiigiand 

Edited by Lyman P. Powell. With introduction 
by George P. Morris. With i6o illustrations^ 
8\ $3- 50. 

CONTENTS: 

Portland, by S. T. Pickard ; Rutland, by Edwin D. Mead; 
Salem, by George D. Lattmer ; Boston, by T. W Higgin'jon 
and E. E. Hali ; Cambridge, by S. A. Eliot ; Concor'^, by F. 
B. Sankorn; Plymouth, by Ellen Watson; Cip'" Cod 
Tcwns. by Katharine Lee Bates, Deerfiel.t by George 
Sheldon; Newport, by Susan Coolidge ; Prov! '.^-ncfc, by 
Wm. B. Weeden; Hartford, by Mary K. Talcott •, New 
Haven, by F. H. Cogswell. 

Historic Towns of the MiddSe States 
Edited by Lyman P. Powell. With introduction by 
Albert Shaw. With 135 illustrations. 8", $3.50. 

CONTENTS : 

Albany, by W. W. Battershall ; Saratoga, by Ellcn H. 
Walworth ; Schenectady, by Judson S. Landon ; Newburgh, 
by Adelaide Skeel; Tarrytown, by H. W. Mabie ; tiiook- 
lyn, by Harring'iON Putnam; New York, by J. B. Gilder; 
Buffalo, by Roland B. Mahany; Pittsburgh, by S. H. 
Church; Philadelphia, by Talcott Williams; Princeton, 
by W. M, Sloane ; 'Wilmington, by E. N. Vallandigham. 

Some Colonial Homesteads 

And Their Stories. By Marion Harland. With 
86 illustrations. 8°, $3.00. 

"A notable book, dealing with early American days. . . . 
The name of the author is a guarantee not only of the greatest 
possible accuracy as to facts, but of attractive treatment of themes 
absorbingly interesting in themselves, . . . _ the book is of 
rare elegance in paper, typography, and binding." — Rochester 
Democrat-Chronicle. 

More Colonial Homesteads 

And Their Stories. By Marion Harland. Fully 
illustrated. 8°, $3.00. 

Where Ghcsts Walk 

The Haunts of Familiar Characters in History and 
Literature. By Marion Harland, author of 
" Some Colonial Homesteads," etc. With 33 
illustrations. 8°, $2.50. " 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. New York and London 



:B^ Hnna jf ullet^ 



A Literary Courtship. 

Under the Auspices of Pike's Peak. With 

12 full-page illustrations. 25 th edition. 16°, 

gilt top $1 25 

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bright and breezy ; its humor is crisp and the general idea 
decidedly original." — Boston Times, 

A Venetian June. 

With II full-page illustrations by George 

Sloane. 12th edition. 16°, gilt top . $1 25 

" ' A Venetian June ' bespeaks its materials by its title, and 
very full the little story is of the picturesqueness, the novelty, 
the beauty, of life in the city of gondolas and gondoliers." — 
Literary World. 

Pratt Portraits. 

Sketched in a New England Suburb. 15th 

edition. With 13 full-page illustrations by 

George Sloane. 12°, gilt top . . $1 50 

"The lines the author cuts in her vignette are sharp and 
clear, but she has, too, not alone the knack of color, but what 
is rarer, the gift of humor." — New York Times. 

Peak and Prairie. 

From a Colorado Sketch-Book. With 16 full- 
page illustrations. 16°, gilt top , . $l 25 

*' Characters and incidents are traced with a sure hand and 
with unerring literary skill."— /"/^^ Churchman. 

One of the Pilgrims. 

A Bank Story. 12°, gilt top . . $1 25 
" The story is graceful, delightful, and full of vivacity."— 
The Congregationalist. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York & London 



THE 

ARIEL SHAKESPEARE 

***(NOW COMPLETE) 

It would seem diflScult to find place for another edition of 
Shakespeare, but the Ariel edition will be found to 
differ in so many respects from any other edition that it 
is thought no justification will be needed for its exist- 
ence. The distinctive features of the edition are as 
follows : 

Each play is in a separate volume, 3^x5 inches, and 
about a half inch in thickness— of comfortable bulk for 
the pocket. 

The page is printed from a new font of brevier type. The 
text is complete and unabridged^ and as nearly as possi- 
ble as the author wrote it, without pruning or alteration, 
and conforms to the latest scholarly editions. 

As illustrations, the charming designs by Frank Howard 
(first published in r^ii), five hundred \n all, have been 
effectively reproduced, making a series of delicate out- 
line plates. 

Now complete in 40 volumes, anc. /ssued in four styles : 

A.— Garnet cloth, each . ^ i°5'^^* 

Per set, 40 volumes, in box . . . $16.00 

B. — Full leather, gilt top, each (in a box) . . 65 cts. 
Per set, 40 volumes, in box . . . $25.00 

C. — 40 volumes bound in 20, cloth, in box. 

Per set (sold in sets ofily) .... $15.00 

D.—^o volumes bound in 20, half calf, extra, gilt 
tops, in box. 
Per set (sold in sets only) .... $3S-oo 

" No pocket edition of Shakespeare has ever been pub- 
lished that will compare with this in any feature. — 
Rochester Herald. 

" The best handy-volume edition upon the market, in 
text, letter-press, illustration, and binding."— ^^j/^» 
Globe. 

Send for prospectus, showing style of type, 
illustrations, paper, etc., etc. 



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Little Journeys Series. 

By ELBERT HUBBARD. 

5 vols., f uHy illustrated with portraits, views, etc. 
i6mo, gilt top, each, $1.75 ; per set, $8.75. 

I. Good Men and Great. 

2. Famous Women. 
3. American Authors. 

4. American Statesmen. 
5. Eminent Painters. 

" The series is well conceived and excellently sus- 
tained. The most captious critic could not suggest 
an improvement. Never was there more satisfactory 

{jacking in more attractive shape, of matter worth at 
east ten times the money. Such a book as this 
ought to be circulated in the schools ; it is full of 
instruction, and must inevitably whet the young 
appetite for what is healthy, bracing, and developing 
in pure literature." — Buffalo Cotnjnercial. 

Literary Hearthstones. 

5 off the Home Life of Certain \ 
and Thinkers. 

By MARION HARLAND. 

Fully illustrated. i6mo, each, $1.50; per set of two 
volumes, in a box, $3.00. 

I. Charlotte Bronte. 

2. WillSam Cowper. 
3. Hannah More. 4. John Knox. 

To be followed by : 

John Bunyan. 5ir Thomas More. 
The Qurneys. The Wesleys. 

" The writer has read her authorities with care, and 
whenever it has been practicable she has verified by 
personal investigation what she has heard and read. 
We have as a result narratives excellent as records 
and distinctly readable. Anecdotes are introduced 
with tact ; the treatment of the authors is sympa- 
thetic and characterized by good judgment." — N, K. 
Tribune, 

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NEW YORK & LONDON 



Studies off the Home Life of Certain Writers 
and Thinkers. 



NEW FICTION 



Miss Cayley's Adventures 

By Grant Allen. With 80 illustrations by 
Gordon Browne. 

12% $1.50 

" One of the most delightfully jolly, entertaining, and fasci- 
nating works that has ever come from Grant Allen's pen," — 
A'. V. World. 

" A quaint and sparkling story — bright and entertaining from 
beginning to end." — Chicago Times-Herald. 

Hilda Wade 

A Woman with Tenacity of Purpose. By 
Grant Allen.- With 98 illustrations by 
Gordon Browne. 

12% $1.50 

" Mr. Allen's text, as in all his writings, is singularly pictur- 
esque and captivating. There are no commonplaces and although 
the outcome is perfectly evident early in the story, the reader will 
find his attention chained. . . . It is one of the best of the 
summer books, and as an artistic bit of light reading ranks high. 
It is a pity that such a vivid imagination and high-bred style of 
discourse are no longer in the land of the living to entertain us 
with further stories of adventure." — Boston Titnes. 

The Angel of CSay 

By William Ordway Partridge, author of 
" The Song Life of a Sculptor," etc. 
With illustrations by A. B. Wenzell. 
12°, $1.25 

"A story of the studio order, free from the grosser elements 
which frequently mar such novels, and stronger in situations, 
thought, and action than are most. The central figure is that of 
the true man and artist, and this character is splendidly por- 
trayed. The style and story both invite perusal. — Portland 
Transcript, 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
New York and London 



Works on the Civil War 

The Story of the Civil War. A Concise Account 
of the War in the United States of America between 
i86i and 1865. By John Codman Ropes, Member 
of the Massachusetts Historical Society, The Mili- 
tary Historical Society of Massachusetts, Fellow of 
the Royal Historical Society. Author of "The 
Army Under Pope," "The First Napoleon," "The 
Campaign of Waterloo," etc. To be complete in 
four parts, with comprehensive maps and battle plans. 
Each part will be complete in itself, and will be sold 
separately. 

Part I. Narrative of Events to the Opening of the 
Campaign of 1862. With 5 maps. 8vo . $i 50 
Part II. The Campaigns of 1862. With 13 maps. 
Svo 2 50 

Slavery and Four Years of War. A Political 
History of Slavery in the United States, together 
with a narrative of the Campaigns and Battles of the 
Civil War in which the author took part. By Joseph 
Warren Keifer, Brevet Major-General of Volun- 
teers, ex-Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
U.S.A., and Major-General of Volunteers, Spanish 
War. 
Two vols., illustrated. 8°, 336, 340 pages, $6 00 

Ulysses S. Grant, and the Period of National 
Preservation and Reconstruction. 1822- 

1885. By William Conant Church, late Lieut. - 
Colonel, U.S.A., author of " Life of John Ericsson." 
No. 21 in the " Heroes of the Nations Series." Fully 
illustrated Large 12", cloth, $1 50 ; half leather, 
gilt top $1 75 

Robert E. Lee, and the Southern Confed- 
eracy. 1 807-1 870. By Prof. Henry Alex- 
ander White, of Washington and Lee University. 
No. 22 in the "Heroes of the Nations Series." 
Fully illustrated. Large 12°, cloth, $i 50; half 
leather, gilt top $i 75 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

New York and London 



JAN 3 1902 



